


kick at the darkness

by ilgaksu



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1960s, Alternate Universe - Dirty Dancing Fusion, Bisexual Lance (Voltron), Cuban Lance (Voltron), Eventual Happy Ending, Korean Keith (Voltron), M/M, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Racism, Period-Typical Sexism, Police Brutality
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-19
Updated: 2018-02-10
Packaged: 2018-09-23 20:31:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 49,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9675044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilgaksu/pseuds/ilgaksu
Summary: “I didn’t know they let boys like you carry anything.”“You’d be surprised.”“Yeah,” Lance says, dismissive and so close Keith can feel the heat rising from his skin, “I would be. Nyma, are you dancing?”“I told you, Lance,” she says, “I’m making friends.”“Once you’re done with that, he needs to go back.” Lance leans forward and brushes his lips over Nyma’s cheekbone. He looks sidelong at Keith. “House rules. Don’t take it personally.” He looks back to Nyma. “If you get bored, I’ll be here.” Lance gives Keith a final look over, the drag of it like a weight, and leaves.“Your boyfriend’s a jerk,” Keith tells Nyma, watching Lance’s retreating back through the crowd of dancers. Nyma’s face does something complicated, even as she snickers.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warning that the plotlines of this fic involve wealthy older female guests trying to solicit sex from a younger male hotel worker, and 1965 spoilt white college boys trying to solicit sex from another male guest. Basically, if you've seen the original Dirty Dancing film, you're good, although there are plotlines I chose to take out (including the abortion plotline, which never happens).

**July, 1965**

 

“Keith,” Shiro says, “I don’t want to have to ask again.” 

Keith slumps further in his seat. He puts his feet up on the dashboard. Shiro leans over and calmly knocks them back off, leaving Keith to scramble back into a sitting position.

“Didn’t realise you were such a sell-out,” Keith mumbles, fiddling with the pins on his lapel, running his thumb over the enamel, the gilt, the _No War No Fascism No Division_. The smallest one, bright red, is underneath one calling for nuclear disarmament; it glares at Keith every morning like reaffirmation. It says _Immoral Minority Member._

Shiro sighs.

“I’m trying to get us through the door here, Keith,” Shiro corrects him. “Take them off until we get the keys. Then you can do whatever you want.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” Keith mutters, and Shiro says, “Hold me to whatever you want. It’s five minutes, Keith, not forever. You can put them right back on.”

“It’s the whole summer,” Keith reminds him.

“It’s been summer for a whole month already. We’re here two months,” Shiro says, because Shiro can be infuriatingly literal. “And you can wear them the whole two months. Minus five minutes whilst I get us through Reception.”

Keith side-eyes him.

“You booked under Shirogane, right?”

“No, Keith,” Shiro retorts sarcastically, “I booked under my other name.” He stares at him, solid and reasonable, for several moments, until Keith cracks and starts unpinning the badges from his lapel. He runs his thumb over the red one again.

“You think they’ll know what this means?”

“I don’t care if they do in five minutes,” Shiro says. Keith rolls his eyes and removes it, drops them all in his pocket and wraps his fingers around them, these last talismans. He waits for Shiro to unbuckle his driving prosthetic from his shoulder, fussing with the badges.

“Ready?”

“I guess. The things I do for you,” Keith deadpans.

“Yeah, you’re a martyr, Keith.” Shiro says, dry as dust, leans over and opens his own door. “Get out of the car.”  

 

*****

The hotel is beautiful in the way most expensive buildings are beautiful, shored up by the weight of its own money and baked in the heat of the Florida skyline. The people are different from Washington, sure, but it’s variation on a theme. Keith and Shiro are staying in room 294, which is on the ground floor of one of the villas; like the keyed-up colours of the flowers and the Florida sky, the layout of this place seemingly defies all logic. Shiro tells him to memorise the number, tells him not to lose his key, and Keith rolls his eyes hard. 

“I’m not six anymore, Shiro,” he says. Shiro rolls his eyes in echo.

“I’m going to call Allura and tell her we’re settled fine,” Shiro tells him. They’ve been travelling on and off for a few days to get here, taking turns at the wheel, Keith’s license two years old and still burning a hole in his pocket. Shiro’s rung Allura every night, even when driving through the night. Keith’s woken up sometimes, sprawled in the backseat, to see Shiro tucked in the telephone box outside a gas station, his head inclined towards the receiver held close to his chest.

“Cool,” Keith says, “I want to go look around,” and pretends not to see how Shiro looks a bit relieved, how desperately Shiro had wanted to guard the last scraps of his own privacy. He sometimes wonders what they talk about, Shiro and his girlfriend: he can hear them talking back in Washington, a constant unbroken murmur from behind closed doors, but Keith tries not to listen if he can help it. He snags his Ballard paperback and heads back out into the sunlight.

The sun beats down on the lawn. Over the rim of his book, lying on his jacket, Keith takes everyone in in small blinkered glances. He quickly clocks why Shiro was so insistent on Keith carrying his key with him. There’s not a single other Asian guest in sight, and money’s only an insulation if people believe you have it when you say so. There’s a group of college boys in the corner of the lawn, play-wrestling and talking loudly about girlfriends: the bob of their throats when they swallow from Coke bottles, hands slick with condensation. One of them tries to talk to Keith for a while, but eventually and clearly gives him up for a lost cause. Keith can’t help but wonder why he bothered in the first place. He’s not a college boy, and there’s plenty of other rich kids here playing at it to hide out from the draft. There’s plenty of kids not even bothering and getting away from it, peace legacies thanks to their parents. Keith goes back to reading, the Miami heat stretching across his shoulders and through his clothes like a fresh brand, and loses time. He only looks up half an hour later, startled by the sound of breaking glass. He’s not the only one. Necks turn as if hinged on the noise. _Trouble in paradise._

There’s an outdoor bar on the nearest side of the lawn to where Keith’s lying. He’s barely paid attention to it. At eighteen, he’s underage. At eighteen and on Shiro’s watch, he’s got a better shot at the moon. It barely takes him three seconds to take in the drunken stumble of a check-shirted stranger, the crackle of sunburn on the back of a neck, the broken glass he’s clearly knocked over getting himself to standing. One of the guests, Keith would guess. Can’t take the heat, can’t hold his alcohol, can’t manage the mix of the the two. He’s gesturing wildly to a tall black woman in pastel capris and a halterneck. Whatever he’s saying, it doesn’t look pretty, his head tilted back to meet her eyes. Her face is stony when she replies, and Keith can feel the spike in the nervous glances the bar staff are throwing each other from here, even with them being separated by a slab of brightly-veined marble as defence.

Keith will never remember the next moment without it being coloured by what came after, the afterimages bleeding in like the gentle violence of Miami at sunset. He’ll try his best, but it’s not his fault. People will make stories out of anything, even out of a boy passing you by on his way back off his break, all careful white collar and the stranglehold of a perfectly straightened tie. Suddenly, he’s there, stood between the two at the bar, his uniform starched in the parching heat. He says something without turning to look at the woman, distance blurring the syllables, but Keith’s sure it’s something like _take a walk, Nyma._ Nyma? She goes, rounding the corner and out of sight. Keith watches the line where the boy’s neck meets his shoulder, the mathematical swoop of it when he turns his head. He says something quietly to the two other men stood behind the marble of the countertop, too quietly for anyone to pick up. The relief on their faces is noticeable from Keith’s distance, which is telling. The guest moves to go, clearly unsteady on his feet, and the boy - and he is a boy, Keith’s sure of it, for all the enforced silhouette of his jacket renders him adult and alien - says something, voice light, face in profile when he smiles. Keith stares as the boy slouches and lets the guest throw an arm around his shoulders, helping the man to his room. All in all, it’d almost be forgettable. Keith’s seen someone drunk before, and the faint sheen of entitlement on someone’s face is familiar as a second skin which doesn’t fit him. So it’s not unusual, but for how that boy’s smile is the best fakest thing Keith has seen this month, the best fakest thing he’s seen outside of a fucking picturehouse. The guest steps in the broken glass he’s dropped, crushing it underfoot, and Keith winces where the boy who’ll have to clean it up doesn’t.  

All in all, it’d be forgettable, a story at a distance, set a remote fifteen paces away from Keith. Except for how two hours later, wandering aimlessly through the taste of honeysuckle in the air and identical, perfect villas, unwilling to admit defeat, unwilling to say the word _lost_ \- he walks into the same woman and boy sat on one of the low decorative fences. The woman is intimidatingly beautiful, Keith decides. A lack of interest doesn’t mean he can’t notice the high plucked arch of her eyebrows, the glossy wound of her mouth, the shine of her crossed bare calves as she breathes out cigarette smoke in a practised, dismissive gesture and says, “Think about it, Lance.”

“When they start paying me to think, sure,” the boy - Lance - replies. He looks older than Keith originally thought. He looks better up close than Keith originally thought, so much so that when Lance’s eyes snap up to meet his and Keith realises he’s been caught staring he still can’t tear his eyes away.

There’s a beat of silence, where Keith realises he should probably be making some kind of excuse and where he instead notices that Lance’s eyes are a ridiculous blue, which isn’t the sort of thing he’d been able to tell at fifteen paces but makes him fit in the hypercolour of Miami seamlessly. He looks like a boy that fell out of the sky; he looks cut from the fucking dawn; Keith feels hooked, feels helpless, feels it in his bones.  

“Do you need something?” Lance says immediately, casting a wary look to where Nyma is smoking and making no attempt to hide it.

“No,” Keith manages. Nyma laughs softly and not very nicely and says, “You shy, honey?”

“Nyma,” Lance cuts in, sounding weary, “Quit it.” Nyma sighs, leaning down to stub out her cigarette against the dirt, and then swiftly taking out a second. She leans across Lance’s body and slides her hand into the inner pocket of his jacket, bringing out a hotel-branded lighter. She keeps her eyes on Keith the whole time. The implied familiarity with Lance’s clothes, Lance’s body, makes Keith’s skin itch.  

“I’m just looking,” Keith says finally.

“I’m sure you are,” Nyma says, eyes dancing, “You and half the resort. Looking for anyone in particular?”

She uncrosses her legs, leans her forearms on her thighs, and grins at Keith, mouth open wide and teeth gleaming against her lipstick.

“ _Nyma_ ,” Lance says again, before fixing his gaze on Keith. He’s not smiling when he says, “You’re new, yeah? This part -” he gestures vaguely with his hands, “This is the staff quarters. You can’t come in here if you’re a guest.”

“Oh,” Keith replies, “I didn’t know.”

“That’s fine,” Lance says, “Now you do.”

“It’s kind of open plan.”

“Yeah, they don’t signpost it.”

The lack of smile settles under Keith’s skin like healing sunburn. You don’t want to keep touching it. You know it’ll make it worse. You still can’t help it. Whatever his expression is, Nyma makes a faint noise and takes another drag of her cigarette.

 “Sorry about him,” she interrupts, “Lance is in a mood today.”

“Nyma,” Lance says, for the third time, annoyance clear in his voice. It’s like listening to a stuck record. Keith tries not to smile. “Do you want to buy out a newspaper headline? I’m pretty sure there’s someone in the whole state that hasn’t heard about how my week’s going.” Nyma rolls her eyes at him.

“What’s wrong?” Keith asks. When they both look back at him, surprise clear on their faces, Keith realises maybe they’d forgotten he was there for a moment. “I mean, is something happening?”

Lance just stares at him, not quite slack-jawed but getting there.

“Oh, he’s sweet,” Nyma murmurs. “That’s sweet.”

Lance blinks once, then twice, then laughs. It’s the sort of laugh that maybe once started out genuine, like how we all start out meaning well, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

“Did I say something funny?” Keith says, frowning, anger spiking. Nyma and Lance look at each other hurriedly, and Keith sees the sudden nerves underlying the glance. He schools his face as best he can. Lance shakes his head.  

“Nothing’s happening,” Lance says finally, “Nothing’s wrong, okay? Everything’s fine.” Then he looks at Keith, long and hard. “You should be getting back. Guest villas are back the way you came.”

“Bet I can’t miss them,” Keith says, unable to help himself. Lance’s eyes narrow.

“No,” Lance says, slowly. “You can’t.”

Keith feels Lance’s eyes follow him until he turns the corner. He faintly hears Nyma go, “Now you’re just proving my point, Lance.”

He doesn’t stay to listen to the reply.

 

*****

“He’s nice to look at, isn’t he?” Nyma says, low in Keith’s ear. In Ancient Greece, a man once committed suicide by pouring poison into his own eardrum. Keith thinks a more enterprising man would pay Nyma to do it for him. “Sometimes he opens his mouth though, and that can ruin it.” 

“I wasn’t looking,” Keith lies. Lance, three metres away and unreachable, drops his forehead to a girl’s shoulder and laughs helplessly against her collarbone. Keith isn’t lost, but he sure feels it. In his mind, he retraces his steps to figure out he’s ended up here, watching Lance dance like a revelation in the staff quarters; watching something not for him somewhere he shouldn’t be. He’d been wandering again, an excuse to give Shiro an empty room to unspool his thoughts down a phone line. If he’s honest with himself, he’d walked back towards the staff quarters half out of sheer spite, as though he could find Lance sat there at dusk, immovable from yesterday, the taste of honeysuckle and a better retort on the tip of Keith’s tongue. It makes no sense, returning the scene of some petty unnameable crime when Keith’s seen Lance at the bar today, all day, his smiling never waning. Keith felt faintly exhausted just watching it. Lance’s shirtsleeves had been rolled up, his jacket discarded in the heat as he churned out drinks, the softer underside of his wrists visible and oddly vulnerable for it - right up until a scowling man that must have been Lance’s manager snapped something at him and Lance grudgingly pulled his jacket back on despite the summer blaze.

He’s not stupid enough to think that he could look like anyone, but he’d heard music, unmistakable in the night, and drifted towards the sound, feeling dragged by the magnetism of it. Stepping past the fence he’d met Nyma and Lance sat on felt like the kind of minor rebellion that required witnesses, but there was only a slight waiter Keith had seen stacking cups at breakfast nearby, struggling to juggle two watermelons the size of their head. When they brushed past him on the path, letting a watermelon fall out of their arms, it had been easy enough to catch it before it hit the ground.

“I’ll carry it,” he’d said, and their eyes had flickered nervously over his shirt and tie, a leftover from dinner under the leather of his jacket. Keith had put the watermelon to one side and pulled his tie off. He’d thought it was a smart move, but having bartered his way in, he’d rapidly realised he was the most overdressed he’d ever been, his shirt instantly melting against his back like liquid in the crowded heat.      

And now he was here, watching Lance dancing in his undershirt with every fucking girl in here whilst Nyma watched him with a snake-smile.

“Sure,” she counters now. Her lipstick tonight is cerise. It matches her earrings, her nail polish, clashes against the glittery black of her full-skirted dress. “Whatever helps you sleep at night, kiddo.”

“I always sleep fine.” Keith slides his hands into his jacket pockets. It’s anchoring. He watches her eyes flicker over him, scrounges desperately for something to say, fingers curling against the inner leather.

It doesn’t help that Lance is the sort of dancer that forces you to pay attention, Keith thinks bitterly. He’s not the only one. When Lance had run in earlier, holding tight to Nyma’s hand, whooping, his eyes on fire, Keith’s certain that he had felt the drop in his stomach at the same time as everyone else. They’d managed to clear a space on the floor almost immediately. Keith hadn’t even known dancing could look like that, like euphoria, like the world hesitating on its axis, like every part of a person’s body was made anew and beautiful.The song ends, and Lance kisses the back of the girl’s hand and immediately begins weaving over towards them, grin shining, sweat dotting his skin. He gets uncomfortably close to Keith, his body angled towards Nyma.

“You see that last part?”

“I wasn’t watching,” Nyma admits, and Lance’s face falls. “I was making a new friend.”

Lance recognises him, and not in a good way.

“Why’s he here?” Lance asks, frowning. He gives Keith a once over that leaves Keith both wanting and found wanting. Keith flushes and tells himself it’s unnoticeable under the dimmed lights.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Nyma says, fussing with her hair. “I thought he was pretty.”

“Yeah, well,” Lance says, “Put him back.”

“I got lost,” Keith says defensively. Lance raises one eyebrow.

“Again?”

“I carried a watermelon,” Keith admits. “Your friend was struggling.” He looks around for the waiter, but he’s gone now. Keith knows how it looks and swears internally. Lance, his eyes lingering, shrugs.

“I didn’t know they let boys like you carry anything.”

“You’d be surprised.”

“Yeah,” Lance says, dismissive and so close Keith can feel the heat rising from his skin, “I would be. Nyma, are you dancing?”

“I told you, Lance,” she says, “I’m making friends.”

“Once you’re done with that, he needs to go back.” Lance leans forward and brushes his lips over Nyma’s cheekbone. He looks sidelong at Keith. “House rules. Don’t take it personally.” He looks back to Nyma. “If you get bored, I’ll be here.” Lance gives Keith a final look over, the drag of it like a weight, and leaves.

“Your boyfriend’s a jerk,” Keith tells Nyma, watching Lance’s retreating back through the crowd of dancers. Nyma’s face does something complicated, even as she snickers.

“Hey,” she says, casual except for her eyes, “Wanna dance?”

“With you?” Keith says, shocked, and she snorts.

“Yeah, with me.” She looks over at Lance, pointedly, reminding him where he is and who he is and why he can’t look at strange boys like that. “You can’t always have your first choice of partner, Keith. It’s not always the right moment, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Keith echoes. If that’s her telling him to back off, it’s pretty mild. “You’re a good dancer. I saw.”

Nyma throws her head back and laughs.

“That’s nice of you, honey. It’s only my job.” When Keith looks at her blankly, she sighs. “I’m the dance instructor. I run the classes?”

“Oh,” Keith says, “I don’t really listen to the rec announcements.”

“You and me both,” she mutters, before looping her fingers around his wrist and tugging him onto the floor. “Come on, let’s see what you’ve got.” She leans in, her breath tickling his cheek. “And reminder, it’s rude not to pay attention to the girl you’ve got your hands on, sweetheart.”

 

*****

“It’s like this,” Nyma is saying, for about the fifth time, leaning over Keith’s shoulder, hands hooked careful on his hips, pulling him taut and back against her chest. “And then you - yeah, that’s it. Close enough, but you’re only a beginn--” 

With how close they are, Keith feels her startle almost instantly, looks up from her hands to the door of her dance studio. Lance is stood there, backlit by the afternoon, his face in shadow and bleached of all expression.

“Lance,” Nyma says, on a quick intake of breath. “You’re off shift early.” There’s something in her voice, an edge to her, lacquered and brittle. Nervous? Guilty? A beat late, Keith steps out of her arms and to the side, looking between the two; Nyma immediately lets her arms drop to her sides, watching Lance approach with her face blank. “Lance,” she says again, “This isn’t -”  

It’s only when Lance passes Keith, walking through the fall of light on the floor, that Keith realises how angry he is. His hands are _shaking._ When Lance notices Keith staring, he shoves them into his jacket’s pockets, his eyes flashing fast and opaque before he turns his glare back on Nyma. Keith still thinks sometimes of how they’d danced together, how they’d fit together, Lance’s hand on the back of her neck like possession, her leg around his hip like ownership, the press of their bodies like soulmates trying to undo how fate had left them cleaved.  

 _Lance doesn’t own me,_ Nyma had laughed, but she hadn’t said whether Lance thought he did, and Keith hadn’t thought to ask; and now Lance is staring at Nyma like he can’t decide if he wants to set her on fire, or himself, or whether he wants them to burn together.

Keith has never felt more out of place.

“Lance,” Nyma tries again, frowning, looking annoyed, “This isn’t what - Lance, you’re overthinking this,” and reaches out her hand as though to hook her fingers around his jacket’s lapel, smoothing, soothing. Lance’s face twists suddenly. He bats her hand away - Keith can still see the tremor run through him - and storms back out. It all takes less than a minute, and he doesn’t look at Keith once as he passes him again, his eyes set on the door. If it wasn’t for the look on his face, Keith would say it was easy as a jealous rage.

“Lance!” Nyma shouts, annoyance winning out through the warring concern, “Lance, you’re being overdramatic!” and Lance, as though in agreement, as though in punctuation, slams the door so hard Keith can hear the aftershocks.

He hadn’t spoken once. Nyma sighs, her shoulders collapsing under the weight of it and says, “Honestly, he’s always been like this. I don’t know why I expected -”

“Sorry,” Keith says, and she looks at him, confused.

“You didn’t do anything.”

“Still. I don’t want -” The words stick in his throat. _I don’t want to come between you two._ “I don’t want to make work difficult for you, if you’re -” _Together._ Nobody holds a girl like that without meaning it, Keith thinks, nobody touches a girl with all the weight of old history and can’t mean it, surely -  

Lightning doesn’t strike in the same place twice. It’s like winning the lottery. Luck is just probability. Luck is just numbers.

“Trust me,” Nyma mutters, “He’s always this much work.” She winks at him suddenly. “You, on the other hand -”

“Not happening,” Keith tells her, smiling despite the sudden rising ache. “Sorry. It’s not you. It’s just -”

“Boys, right?”

Keith’s breath freezes in his chest, but Nyma’s tilting her head at him, and there’s only two of them in the room. Her word against his. His word against hers.

“Something like that,” Keith admits. He thinks _nobody would believe her, anyway,_ with a kind of ugly awareness that makes him feel both relieved and ashamed. The truth does not set you free.

“I hope someone’s nice to you one day, Keith,” she says, after a moment. Keith shoves down how Lance had looked carrying her home on his back the other night, her arms looped around his throat, his shoulders dark against his undershirt. How he’d been carrying her shoes. How they’d been laughing, and Keith had pressed himself up unseen against the concrete wall of the staff quarters, cold at his back, subsumed by the dark as they’d passed him by; like being swallowed would make this ease, like falling backwards into shadow would be a better, different kind of falling, one disengaged from the bird’s wing of a boy’s collarbone.    

“Sure,” Keith replies, “I could get used to that.”

 

*

 “If you’re looking for the pool, it’s around and to the side,” Lance says, sensing Keith’s hesitance without opening his eyes. “It’s open for another three hours.” When Keith doesn’t move, he opens his eyes. Surprise flickers over his face.

“You’re not going to try and say you’re lost again, right?” Lance challenges.

“I wanted to talk to you.”

Something else shivers over Lance’s face then, too fast for Keith to catch it, before he picks up the coffee mug at his side and takes another gulp.

“Go on, then.”

He doesn’t exactly sound welcoming, but Keith’ll take it. Finding Lance on a break before his evening shift was a lucky accident, heading back to the fence again like a looped record, but it also means Keith can guess Lance has been on his feet for hours. He can also guess he doesn’t appreciate the company, especially not from a guest, especially not from him in particular.

Keith still doesn’t get the whole of Lance’s deal, but he thinks he can extrapolate.

“I’m sorry about yesterday,” Keith says, “If I’d known she was your girl, I’d never have - not that I was -”

Maybe he should have rehearsed this.

“What?”

When Keith braves a glance, Lance is frowning.

“Are you -” Lance begins, stops, takes another sip of coffee. “You’re talking about Nyma.”

“Yes,” Keith says, relieved. “Yeah, Nyma. She’s just teaching me to dance. That’s it. That’s all. I figured you got the wrong idea.”

“What Nyma does is her own business,” Lance replies. “I’m not her keeper.”

“You sure seemed like you were,” Keith retorts without thinking, and Lance raises his eyebrows. His hands steady against china, leant against the whitewash like this, he’s a world away from the raging silhouette in the studio.

“Look,” Lance tells him, “Nyma gives private lessons _all the time._ It’s nothing special.” Keith tries not to wince. “I’m not gonna go running to your brother. Happy?”

“How do you know about Shiro?” Keith manages, because it’s easier than saying _I’m not trying to bribe Nyma into bed,_ better than saying _You think I’m scared of you?_ and altogether less stupid than saying _I didn’t think you’d ever look back._

Lance drains the mug and stands up to place it on a crate of similarly empty, stained crockery. The faint steam from the kitchens hisses over his face and he says, “It’s my job. Room 294, right?”

Keith nods dumbly. Lance looks him up and down in a sweep of eyelashes and dismissal, doe-eyed but for the disinterest, and he adds, “Well, then you’ve taken the room for the season. Management has us memorise your numbers. Helps with billing. Your brother’s heavy on the soda.”

Shiro’s heavy on the soda because it’s how he practised the fine motor control in his left hand after the accident, a right-handed boy pouring himself endless glasses into the night; tipping too far, the bottle slipping to the floor, the faint shattering and fizz of upended liquid whilst Keith watched him silently and unseen from the stairs. Shiro never got out the glasses cabinet key until long after Keith ought to have been asleep, but Shiro’s smile at twenty had been inescapable, inevitable, muscle memory. The body remembers, and Keith didn’t know how to reach him, watching Shiro order extra soda with rye in restaurants and tell Keith it was an acquired taste. An acquired taste; like Keith hadn’t seen the three months it took Shiro to actually acquire, like Keith hadn’t seen the replacement glasses from the department store and how Shiro never touched Mom and Dad’s wedding china until he was certain his grip wouldn’t falter.  

“Yeah,” Keith says, “I don’t know what you’ve got against me, but you can leave Shiro out of this.”

“I’ve not got anything against you,” Lance replies, “I don’t know you. Are we done?”

 

*****

Chad is still talking to Keith. Keith’s vaguely aware of it, like when Shiro’s listening to Buddy Holly in the kitchen, burning water whilst Keith is upstairs reading, like when Keith’s asleep in the backseat of the car and Shiro’s listening to the local radio stations shift across state lines. Chad, the son of some property investors taking up their complimentary stay at the hotel they half-fund, has reminded Keith of this fact twelve times since he suggested the two of them go check out the grounds. Shiro didn’t see Keith’s face fast enough to save him, although it’s been like this since dinner. Chad is still in his jacket, having corralled Keith in the dining hall, and he’s kept commenting on Keith walking out in shirtsleeves through the meandering night.

“I’m not cold,” Keith keeps telling him, keeps having to tell him during a Floridian summer, biting his tongue down on _no, I won’t wear your jacket; no, I don’t want anything of yours on my back_. He never put his badges back on after arriving here, the enamel and plastic of them tacky under the faint sweat of his fingertips, so he’s hardly advertising. Chad’s sure buying though. Keith hopes he won’t have to break anybody’s wrist tonight.

“I should get back soon,” Keith tries again.

“Wow, you’re no fun.” It stings. It’s a definite, deliberate play. Keith still keeps walking after Chad, and tells himself it’s out of spite.

The whites of Chad’s eyes are shining in the evening dark, the gleaming ivory of his teeth when he grins all animal. Ivory is stolen, Keith remembers. Chad keeps smiling, pulls a bunch of staff keys out of his pocket like a conjuring trick, and says, “Come on, I’ll give you a tour.”

Keith looks at the keys and wonders if Chad cajoled them out of someone, a sweeter form of bullying, or if there’s a dishwasher somewhere frantic over having lost them. He wants to say no on principle, but then he thinks of Lance’s casual sneer. _Put him back. House rules._ What’s so precious about Lance’s world anyway? He can see the wall Lance was leaning against when he said _nothing special._ In the space of one hesitating breath, Chad throws the keys up, catches them mid-air, and unlocks the staff kitchen’s door.

It’s 1965. Keith is eighteen. Keith should be old enough to know better. He shrugs off the night and steps through the door into the faintly-lit, sterile cold of the kitchen. It’s vast, all but windowless, steam vents shimmering in the dark. When Keith turns around to find the light switch, Chad is right behind him, head tilted. Is it expectant if there was doubt in the expecting? Keith rolls his eyes and leans behind Chad to hit the light switch, his palm skimming Chad’s shoulder where he misjudges the distance. He turns back around and walks away whilst the lights flicker into life.

“Neat, isn’t it?” Chad says, following him.

“Sure,” Keith replies, rounds the corner into another expanse of gleaming worktops, dragging his fingertips along the ice of the polished surfaces. He looks back, notices it’s left marks, and fixes it with his shirtsleeve.

“They’re only going to clean it again in the morning,” Chad points out, the line of his jaw very deliberate architecture. In the harshness of the new light, it’s obvious how manufactured he is, stripped of the mystery of the shadows. He leans forward. Keith steps back. Keith knocks into the worktop, sending a shiver along the metal, sending a cleaning rota pinned to the end of the bench slipping to the ground. Keith slips around Chad again to go pick it up. He kneels down on the ground, paper under his hand, and looks up to see Nyma, hiding curled under the worktop directly opposite.

She’s crying, his brain supplies dumbly after a moment, her own hand over her mouth and her makeup smeared. She’s still in one of her exhibition dresses, the sequins shuddering around her legs. One of her stockings is ripped. Keith can’t see her shoes. They stare at each other for a moment, shock keeping Keith locked to the spot and then, silently, Nyma shakes her head.

Keith scrambles to his feet. He puts the rota on the side. He doesn’t trust his hands to pin it back where it was properly. He says, “Thanks for showing me around, Chad. I’ve got to go now.”

Predictably, that’s when Chad finally tries to kiss him. Keith turns his head to the side and turns himself to stone. Chad’s mouth hits his cheek, skids along it, the faint feel of stubble like dragging your bare hand along gravel. Keith puts a hand on the forearm caging him in, curls his fingers around it. Not encouragement, but caging in turn.  

“I’ve got to go now,” he says, again, a little louder. He can’t help but feel Nyma’s eyes. “My brother’ll be missing me.”

Chad stares at him for a moment. Keith stares back, his mind racing. Chad sighs and pulls away.

“Yeah, okay,” he says, the tone of his voice gone to sulking, “It’s not like I would’ve told your brother, you know.”

It’s so similar to what Lance had said the other day that to hear it from Chad’s mouth almost makes Keith laugh, but Nyma’s presence in the room is a weight against Keith, pushing him out of alignment.  

“Yeah,” Keith says, “I know.”  

 

*****

“What do you want?” Lance asks him, exasperated, hands a blur over a tray of drinks. Keith tells him, and has the satisfaction of watching Lance’s hands slow down, bit by bit, until finally they’re flat on the bartop.

“Where is she?” he asks, already gesturing to one of the other bartenders. “We have two staff kitchens, do you know which one?” When Keith shakes his head, Lance looks immediately frustrated.

“I can take you,” Keith offers. Lance bites his lip, tapping his fingers on the bartop, but he only hesitates a second.

“Fine,” he says, “Yeah, okay. Fine.”

They barely talk on their way over.

“Sorry for bothering you,” Keith tries.

“You’re not,” Lance replies, eyes locked dead ahead, Keith unsteady on the uneven ground. He stumbles and Lance catches his arm.

“Thanks.” The surprise must be evident on his face, because Lance frowns and says, “I wouldn’t have just let you -” and then stops. “I’m not that much of a -” He stops again, and goes quiet for the rest of the journey. Lance seems to unlock the door and hit the light switch simultaneously, seamlessly, calling out Nyma’s name; Keith follows, drifting, suddenly awkward. By the time he rounds that same corner again, Lance has ducked under it and pulled Nyma’s face against his shoulder.

“Come on,” he says, his voice a low and soothing murmur Keith has never heard before, “Who do I need to kill, buttercup?” Nyma snorts, an ugly, amused sound, and then starts crying again.

Keith feels the brief flare of panic sing through him; Lance meets his eyes and says, “Go, if you want,” and turns back to Nyma. If you want: Keith doesn’t move. He stands there, and then sits on the worktop, feeling incredibly useless, wondering why he’s doing this to himself whilst Lance cradles Nyma and makes quiet soothing noises against her hair. Keith keeps catching snatches of conversation. Despite the quiet of their voices, the room is an echo chamber.  

“Where am I going to go?” he hears Nyma say, “Don’t say your family, Lance. You always say your family.”

“They like you, Nyma. They wouldn’t mind.”

“They wouldn’t mind because they think you’re trying to marry me.”

“Let them think it, it’ll give you somewhere to go -”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Nyma says fiercely, but when Keith braves a glance she still has her face in Lance’s shirt. “I’ll move in with Rolo and just owe him for the rent until I find something -”

“I’ll lend you,” he hears Lance say immediately, “I’m doing alright, I can spare it -”

“Lance, you can’t,” Nyma counters, sounding weary. “What are you going to do? Tell the drug store you’ll owe them?”

“I’ll go back on Epinephrine, it’s cheaper -”

“What’s wrong?” Keith finally asks, unable to stand it any longer, and grits his teeth against the way they both look at him in sync. It’d be funny, how two of the tallest people Keith’s seen here are tucked under a table, except for how none of this is funny and Shiro is definitely wondering where he is.

“They’ve told me my contract runs out next month instead of next year,” Nyma explains, looking exhausted.

“Can they do that?” Keith knows he sounds shocked, from the way Lance raises his eyebrows, but he can’t help it. “Surely they can’t?”

“They can do whatever they want, Keith,” Lance replies. It sounds like he’s trying to snap, but like Nyma’s glitter, it’s strained. “It’s in our contracts.”

“I could lend you the money.”

Nyma laughs at that, trying to wipe messily at her face.

“That’s real sweet of you, kiddo. Do you even know how much money you’re talking about?”

“Does it matter?” Keith says. Lance and Nyma stare at him, again in sync, again in silence, and then look at each other instead. Lance groans and rests his forehead against Nyma’s hair.

“At least he’s honest,” Nyma says, lips twitching. Lance makes another, deeply annoyed noise in reply. She nudges Lance until he moves away, and then slips out from under the table, helping Lance after her, until they’re both stood in front of Keith. Even with her face wrecked by tears, she’s painfully beautiful. Keith doesn’t look at Lance. He already knows they look good together.

“What’s in it for you?”

_I don’t know either._

“Nothing’s in it for me,” Keith replies and Lance mutters, “Yeah, that’s why I don’t trust it,” and Nyma goes, “Lance, shut up,” before turning back to Keith.

“I can’t take it,” she says, as though it kills some kind of pride to say. “I can’t pay that kind of money back.”

“If we win the competition, you can,” Lance points out, eyes flickering back-and-forth between her and Keith in a way Keith can’t translate. “And we’ll win.” He brushes part of Nyma’s hair behind her ear. Keith looks at his feet. “We just have to take first place. Winners or bust. You know we can.”

“What competition?” Keith interrupts. Lance is still looking steadily at Nyma. She smiles, lopsided, and strokes a line across his cheek before dropping her hand back down.

“They’ve scheduled a dance exhibition that night now,” she says quietly to Lance. “The board meeting for contracts is the next morning. I can drive you there, but I’ll miss the actual competition slot.”

Lance’s reaction is visceral. He looks like he wants to hit something very hard, and is instead coiling it somewhere back inside him.

“What competition?” Keith repeats himself. Nyma, uncharacteristically, bites her lip, and looks to Lance. Lance, his shirt marked with her makeup, looks from her to Keith and back again. He seems jittery somehow, in this seething under-skin way, tapping his fingertips against the worktop again.  

“Lance,” Nyma actually says out loud, and Lance shrugs, an abortive gesture. Keith says, “Whatever, I’m just trying to help,” and Lance bites out, “I know,” the flash of the whites of his eyes both like Chad’s outside in the dark and something wholly different. Lance sighs and turns to face Keith.

“It’s being run by an underground bar on the other side of the city,” Lance tells him, face guarded.

“Underground as in basement or underground as in -”

“Illegal,” Lance snaps, “Very illegal. Extremely illegal. Super fucking illegal.” Lance’s eyes shift to Nyma. “I swear to Christ, Nyma, if he goes running to management now -”

“I won’t go to management if you don’t go to my brother,” Keith finds himself saying, squaring his shoulders. Lance stares at him, wide-eyed, before bursting into mildly hysterical laughter. It rings off the walls.

“Where are you _from_?” Lance asks, his eyes on Keith like confusion, like fascination.

“Washington.” Keith is still picking over the way Lance had said illegal, the weirdly defiant eyes with the disparate way his body tensed, with Nyma’s constant watchful silence. “When you say _illegal_ , do you mean -”

“Yes,” Lance says, “Yeah, that’s what I mean.” He looks at Keith’s face and rolls his eyes before dropping his gaze. “I told you I wasn’t Nyma’s keeper,” he says to his own shoes.

“I could dance with you, then.” Lance’s eyes are back on him like snapping a rubber band against his own wrist: the same kind of speed, the same kind of residual ache as the thing settles. “I’ll dance with you. I don’t need the prize money. Let Nyma take it.”

“He could,” Nyma points out. “He’s a quick learner.”

“How quick is quick?” Lance mutters, without looking away from Keith.  

“Try me and find out,” Keith challenges. Nyma makes a quickly smothered noise, but it might have been a laugh. Lance squints at him.  

“Do you hear yourself when you talk, Keith?”

“Did you know you knew my name?” Keith retorts, and grins when Lance blinks, caught off guard. The more disconcerted he can make Lance look, the more he realises there’s something bleeding under Lance’s usual annoyance. It’s kind of fun.

“It couldn’t hurt, Lance,” Nyma presses, and Lance sighs and says, “It really, really could.”

He doesn’t specify why. Keith goes, “If you’re scared I’ll show you up, that’s fine,” deliberately taunting to watch the answering flare in Lance’s expression.  

“How long have you been dancing, like, three days?” Lance answers. “I’ve been Nyma’s dance partner for two years.”

“And Nyma is right here, and Nyma’s going to help,” Nyma says, steely. “Lance. Yes or no?”

The moment hangs, suspended. Keith watches the decision shiver through Lance like the awareness of cold.

“Yes,” he says, quick and staccato, “Yes, fine. I’ll do it.” He looks at Keith, hard. “Keep up and don’t cry.”

"It's cute you think you could make me," Keith replies. 

*****

“Do it again,” Nyma says, standing over where Lance and Keith are collapsed on the floor. She nudges Keith in the ribs with her bare foot, her toenails painted a crisp apple-red. Keith rolls away, nearly crashes into Lance’s side, and then rolls back where he was before making contact.

“Nyma,” Lance pants, one arm thrown over his eyes, “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. You heard of that before?”

“Nice, Lance,” she snipes back, “Very nice. Still, I’m not your mother. Nice won’t win you shit.”

“Tell that to my tip jar,” Lance mutters. He rolls up onto his feet, the back of his undershirt streaked with dust from the floor of the studio, his hair rucked up violently. Keith watches a single bead of sweat slip achingly slowly down the nape of Lance’s neck, following the arc of his spine until he stretches his arms above his head and heads over to his uniform jacket, rifling through the inner pocket. Keith stays on the floor, out of the vantage point of Nyma’s knowing eyes, although he sits up.

“Lance, honey,” Nyma tells him firmly, “If you think Gloria Hearst is giving you ten dollars a piece to be _nice_ to her, I’m got some real bad news for you.”

Lance outright laughs, mean and glorious, and Keith watches him until the noise catches in Lance’s lungs. He coughs, a faint wheeze echoing out of his chest, and Nyma frowns. She takes a step towards Lance, who holds up a hand to still her, rifling faster through his pockets. He pulls out a right angle of grey plastic and turns his back to them.

“You’ve got asthma,” Keith realises, and Lance breathes in, and out, a careful rhythm before pulling the inhaler away from his mouth and turning back around.

“4-fucking-F,” Lance says, his voice a little hoarse, “It’s one way to get out of a war.”  

“Do you need to take a break?” Nyma asks, whilst Keith is still processing that.

“Fuck off,” Lance replies, and goes to stand in front of Keith. “Look, this isn’t working. He makes a terrible girl.”

They’ve been trying for six hours with Keith-as-Nyma’s-replacement. It’s disaster. The memory of Lance’s hands burns through Keith’s clothes. The fact Lance won’t touch him unless they’re dancing somehow makes it worse.

“There’s a reason for that,” Keith can’t resist saying. He looks up at Lance, resting back on his hands, daring Lance to reply. Lance blinks at him, mouth working, before turning back to Nyma, hands on hips.

“I’ll do it,” Lance suggests. “I know this routine. I’ve always said I could do it backwards.”

“I’d like to see you try,” Keith says, and Nyma watches, amused, as Lance whirls on him.

“Get over here,” Lance says, holding out his hand, “You be me.”

“Wow,” Keith says, “Whatever you like, I guess.”

Nyma gives in and laughs as Lance glares at him, an underlying flush to his skin. Keith takes his hand.

 

*

“Gloria,” Darla Huntington says, laughing into the cup of her hand, eyes sparkling, “Really, you’re shameless.”

“I don’t know about that,” Gloria Hearst replies, glass at her lips, “They’re always so - oh, what’s the word, honey?”

“Grateful?” Cindy Gilmore suggests, fingers curled around the stem of her glass so the lacquer hits the light, glinting golden like the wine she’s necking. Keith wishes he couldn’t remember all of their names but he can. It’s a side-effect of growing up with Shiro and his goddamn drip-fed politeness. They all burst into syncopated laughter that puts Keith in mind of a startled flock of birds. _They want too much,_ Lance had said when Keith asked, tense in a way that Keith could feel even without ever having touched him, tense in a way that showed no give. Two tables down, Keith sees the hitch in Lance’s shoulders almost before it happens.  

“Oh, this is so silly,” Cindy adds, delighted. “You know I hate competitions!”

“Darling,” Gloria replies, “Who said there was a competition? You can always have him after.”

“Gloria!”

She shrugs.

“No guarantees. He might get tired.” She pouts. “Poor thing works so hard. Just look at him.”

They all take a moment to watch the speed at which Lance races to the bar and back, smile perfect in that it’s never faltering. Keith wonders why management keep letting him do this, and then remembers how often he’d heard people ask for him, insisting he mix their drinks. He wonders if they’re understaffed. Lance had been yawning all the way through their last rehearsal, but he’d said it was nothing when Keith asked, had sounded slightly embarrassed by it, so Keith hadn’t mentioned it again. He’d turned his head to watch Lance as they’d both lay there on the floor of studio, getting their breath back, watched his mouth and how his eyelashes left shadows on his face. Lance had seemed in danger of falling asleep on the floor for a moment; his breath settling, his eyes closed, the rise and fall of his clothed chest evening, but then he’d remembered where he was and opened his eyes again.

“Management sure know how to make dinner nice to watch,” Darla says, leaning back in her seat. “I’ll give them that.”

“I bet we won’t get him to ourselves at all,” Cindy whines. Keith is so busy staring at her, distracted as though by a trainwreck - by a slow unravelling of anger that rolls through him like an invasion, that sets the entire ground alight and all the city to burning - that he doesn’t see what happens exactly, some kind of background flicker of Darla-and-Gloria meeting eyes.

“Cindy, honey,” Gloria says, “Can I have some of your wine?”

“Some of my - oh, sure!” she passes it over equably enough, “But I thought you didn’t drink -”

Gloria takes the wineglass, delicate to match her hands, holds it aloft above the floor by their table, and then lets it go.

“Oops,” she says, over the sound of shattering glass.

“Gloria, what in the Lord’s -”

“You’ll get another one,” she soothes, a smirk briefly flashing across her face before being tethered in by her best smile, though her eyes stay smug. She exchanges a second look with Darla. It takes Keith a second to realise what they’re doing. He only realises when Lance passes him in a blur of dark jacket and slicked-back hair, stopping at their table.

“Evening, ladies,” he says, eyes darting between the mess of wine and glass on the floor and the three women at the table. “It looks like you’ve had an accident. We’ll get that cleared up shortly for you. In the meanwhile, can I fix you something else?”

“Oh, Lance,” Gloria sighs, leaning back in her chair as though very put upon, “Thank God you’re here now. You know I can’t stand how that other bartender mixes. He’s so...heavy-handed about it.” She drags her eyes down his shirtfront and brings them back up. “You know exactly when to stop.”

“We missed you,” Cindy tells him, a little breathless. “And I’m out of wine.”

“You’d like another of the same?”

“What was it you were drinking, Cindy? No - don’t tell us - Lance, what was she drinking?” Darla asks. They all turn to him attentively, watching in fascination as Lance frowns, counting backwards in his head.

“.....1869 Savignon Blanc,” he says finally. Cindy claps her hands.

“I’ll have another one! How do you do that?”

“It’s my job,” Lance assures her, and there’s a pause where he might leave, and Darla goes, “Lance, sweetie, you don’t have a light on you, do you? I’m positively gasping.”

She goes through her clutch bag, tiny sequins shimmering in the light as she opens the clasps and scoops out a cigarette case. Lance immediately begins to go through his pockets, bringing that hotel-standard lighter out of his inner jacket pocket and leaning over, one hand braced on the table, to light it for her. She doesn’t attempt to move closer; Keith realises it’s a ploy to get him to lean nearer, the line of his body over hers. “Careful there,” she murmurs, when he leans a little to far, and has to rebalance his weight, her hand shooting out to his waist to steady him. “Wouldn’t want you to slip.”

“Thank you,” he says, voice carefully neutral. The fire from the lighter flares in his the reflection of his eyes for a moment, and then he pulls back, his body moving before she lets go of his waist.

“Oh, you’re an angel, sweetie, thank you. Would you like one?”

She spins the cigarette case to face him in a move that’d be idle if it wasn’t so smooth, the case splayed open like an invitation.

“Sorry,” Lance says, “It’s a busy night, and I’m not allowed on the clock.”

“What happens when the clock stops?”   

“You don’t have an accent,” Cindy cuts across before Lance can answer, voice a bit petulant at losing his attention. Lance flashes her a tight, absent smile and says, “My mother’s American.”

Lance doesn’t hold his body like that after Keith touches him, Keith realises, a little after the fact.

“Oh! Well! That explains the eyes,” Cindy says. Keith takes a careful inward breath, but oxygen only feeds fires. “They’re lovely.”

“Thank you,” Lance says, “I take after my father.”

And Keith still doesn’t get the whole of Lance McClain’s deal, but yeah, he’s sure he can extrapolate.

 

*****

When Keith knocks on the door of the studio the night before the competition, shoes held in his hand, there’s a brief silence. Keith wonders if he’s gotten the time wrong, but then Lance shouts, “Door’s unlocked,” and Keith walks through to find him alone, stood alone in the room and staring out of the window as Keith reaches the top of the stairs. They usually keep the blinds down on the second-storey room. The dusk turns everything purple and orange, shifting and formless on the other side of the glass, the boundaries melting. Lance turns around the second he hears the creak of the stairs, his eyes dark, the yellow of the humming electric light casting strangely along his bones.

“Hey,” Keith says, heart in his mouth.

“Hey,” Lance says back after a beat. He looks quieter than Keith is used to.

“Where’s Nyma?” Keith can’t decide if he’s thrilled or desperate that Nyma isn’t here yet. Her presence - threatening and cajoling by turns - is like a buffer that’s keeping them on their axis. Lance’s eyes slide back to the window, which is when Keith realises his fingers are wrapped around the pulley strings to shut the blinds. His knuckles go white with the force of his grip and then relax whilst Keith watches.

“She can’t make it tonight,” Lance tells him. “Something came up. Did you bring your shoes?”

Keith holds them up as answer, which has the side-effect of forcing Lance to look back at him.

“Okay,” Lance says softly, “Okay,” and goes over to the record player whilst Keith sits and changes out of his sneakers, the faint waxy feel of the canvas under his hands whilst he watches Lance carefully slide the vinyl out of its cardboard sleeve. Even from this distance, Keith can see Lance’s hands are shaking as he puts the record into place. He always touches things like this - the records, the player - like someone afraid of breaking them.

“You didn’t close the blinds,” Keith reminds him, and Lance looks up at him, rabbit-startled, the look in his eyes hitting Keith right in the chest. Lance nods hurriedly, and goes and closes the blinds with a soft swishing noise.

He stands in the middle of the room and waits for Keith to join him. He’s forgotten to put the needle on the player to the record. Keith goes and does it for him. Lance watches and huffs a little under his breath.

“Thanks.”

Keith curls his hand around the back of Lance’s neck instead of replying. When he tightens his grip, shifting into the opening stance, Lance shivers. Keith feels it in his own body, and opens his mouth, but then the music starts.

It’s not the kind of dance where you can talk. It’s fast, for a start; Keith can’t think of anything but the sequence, the way it’s been burned into muscle memory, too out of his own head to remember to register the way Lance is warm under his hands.

“Don’t look down,” Lance reminds him, “Look at me,” only there’s something underlying it that throws Keith out for a second, making him stumble. He recovers quick, mutters an apology, and Lance nods once, sharp, and keeps going with him.

When it stops, Keith is out of breath, Keith is reeling, drunk on it. Lance is grinning, even as he’s trying to catch his breath.

“That was -” Lance says, “That was - we were really, really good -”  

It breaks Keith, Lance smiling at him like that, so he kisses him. Lance’s mouth is warm, his hips under Keith’s hands. For a wild, perfect moment, he feels Lance kiss him back, bright and hesitant, teetering on the edge of giving ground. It’s making Keith dizzy with it, flooding him with light, until Lance puts his hands on Keith’s chest and carefully pushes him away.  

For a second, they stay there, Keith looking at Lance’s mouth and Lance looking at Keith. All Keith can hear is the static from the record player.

“I should go,” Lance begins, turning on his heel.

“Do you not like me?”

Keith didn’t mean for his voice to sound like that. Lance stops.

“You’re a bad idea, Keith,” he murmurs.

Lance abruptly bolts down the stairs and out of the room, leaving Keith alone with the studio, the static, and the dying sun he knows without looking is still on the other side of the blinds.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some era notes:
> 
> the badges Keith is [wearing](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/e0/86/eb/e086ebe4d394c50b6bd363eb8e06cf26.jpg) [are](http://collections.museumvictoria.com.au/content/media/0/263900-thumbnail.jpg) [real](http://res-1.cloudinary.com/moad/image/upload/c_scale,w_1024/v1/moad-web/heracles-production/298/93c/5ed/29893c5edb477ddd4fda18dfbedee46cbe47ea685e15883c7c2cd7443e3c/badge1-50b551b53339f-d08b8a7796768eda6c5a38072b1e8a3532444270.jpg). He's reading The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard. 
> 
> The Vietnam War draft affected about 25 per cent of the US population from the start of the war in 1955 to its end in 1975. Keith is eighteen, so has only just become eligible for the draft. Shiro is ineligible due to being a 4F classifcation - permanent deferral on disability grounds. Wealthy young men often escaped the draft; college students and disabled persons (including homosexuality) were two examples of deferrals from the draft. 
> 
> The Cuban Revolution was from 1953-1959 - 1959 marks the overthrow of the government by Fidel Castro. During the next decade, many gay men (and women, though to a lesser extent) fled Cuba and emigrated to Miami, due to the work camps for gay men that occurred under the new rule. Historically, a fear of Communism within the USA was a factor that led to suspicion of newly arrived Cuban families. The Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) didn't help matters. 
> 
> Epinephrine is a form of inhaler medication that was popular until the invention of Alupent in 1961 and its FDA approval in 1963. Alupent became more popular due to its lack of side-effects. 
> 
> The Civil Rights Act (1964) has come into effect, but there would still be huge hostility towards Allura and Shiro as a couple and towards Nyma.  
>  


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a description of police brutality during a club raid. If you want to avoid mentions of specific violence, go from '“Don’t look,” Lance tries to warn him,' to 'Keith doesn't realise he's shaking.' (I'm updating tags as I go right now, but if people do need specific warnings for things, let me know in a comment?)

**February, 1962.**

“Have fun on your date,” Keith says at fifteen, body slung halfway down the sofa, out loud just to watch Shiro freeze. Keith counts to three before Shiro narrows his eyes, blocking the doorway in a navy three-piece suit, and goes, “It’s not - it’s not a date.”

“Sure,” Keith drawls, “That’s why you’re looking like you’re going to your own funeral,” and exaggeratedly turns a page of his magazine. “Don’t forget to get her flowers. Did you make a reservation?” He turns another page, just for the enjoyment of the sound of crisp paper in the silence.

“It’s not a date,” Shiro insists, twenty-two, all bleeding heart, halfway through a law degree like the father Shiro’s grown into an eerie copy of.

“But you want it to be, right?” Keith says, frowning, and Shiro’s eyes flicker away and back, a complicated alchemy Keith can’t translate. Shiro pinches the bridge of his nose, his fingernails slight mirrors against the shine of scar tissue, and says, “I asked her to the dance. Which was, in retrospect, not my best moment.”

He smiles at Keith, a little slanted, like he’s trying to let Keith in on something.

“Oh,” Keith says, surprised. “I thought you weren’t going.”

“I’m not going.” Shiro taps his fingers against the high polish of the side-table in a quick, arrhythmic pattern like a failed piano recital or skipped heartbeat. “ _We’re_ not going.” The plural sounds softer in his mouth somehow.

“She said no?” Keith says, sitting up, feeling his scowl slip into place like breathing, like the way breath goes to smoke in his lungs in grocery stores, in car lots, in libraries, watching silent conversations conducted behind Shiro’s back. “What a -”

“Keith Kogane,” Shiro snaps, “You know better than to finish that sentence.”

“Don’t see how it’s rude if it’s true.”

And it is true: Shiro doesn’t go on blind dates. He hasn’t since he woke up in the hospital. Keith knows a kid brother was enough weight when Shiro still looked like his high school yearbook; dark-haired, smiling, wholesome-as-synonym-for-whole. Shiro, his shirt sleeve pinned high each morning and a German car so he can still drive, stopped being the sort of boy you wanted to take home to your mother the moment a trust fund couldn’t cancel out the scar tissue, the sibling, the stares everywhere he went. It’s an old American game: three strikes and you’re out.

Keith fucking hates baseball. Shiro takes one look at his face, sighs, and goes, “It’s not - she didn’t say no to me, alright? Just to the dance.”

“What kind of girl hates dancing?” Keith asks. Shiro raises his eyebrows.

“Didn’t realise you’d become an expert on them,” he replies evenly, and Keith coughs and flips through another few pages of the magazine, unseeing. Shiro does the same little uneven tap against the table, and says, “She’s not allowed in the dance hall.” There’s a funny, bitter twist to his mouth. “It’s segregated.” Another pause.

“Oh,” Keith says, “Oh, shit.”

He’d been wondering when Shiro had given himself time to meet a girl, in between the legal aid volunteering, class, and badly cooking dinner.

“So then I said I’d drive her somewhere,” Shiro says, “Not thinking, naturally. I assumed she’d realised I meant to somewhere she could go to with me, not just -”

“Not just for a drive,” Keith says, realising, “Oh, holy -”

“Keith,” Shiro cuts him off, but there’s an uncharacteristic flush riding high under his skin. “So, anyway. She was deservedly unimpressed. Once I figured out why, I apologised. And she, as it turns out, drives, and will be here shortly.”

Keith immediately jumps up and scrambles over to look out of the bay windows onto the street, pushing aside the blinds impatiently to scan the evening. There’s no sign yet, and when he turns back around, Shiro is hovering almost at his back. The look on his face, for a moment, is telling, before he registers Keith’s eyes and blinks his expression clear.

“You think she’s pretty,” Keith says, gloating, high on the power of Shiro’s discomfort, and Shiro makes an annoyed noise and heads over to the drinks cabinet.

“I don’t think anything,” Shiro says huffily, “She’s objectively - something.” He catches himself just before he overpours the rye. The bottle clinks heavily against the rim of the glass. “And we’re not talking about this.”

“Sure we’re not,” Keith says, fifteen and giddy and halfway to nasty with it, fascinated by how Shiro had stared down whole courthouses but right now showed no intention of looking up from his glass anytime soon. “Go on, tell me I’ll understand it when I’m older.”

“Hell, I hope not,” Shiro mutters, “You’d burn the whole state down for the right girl.”

Keith feels the word _girl_ as a stone. He shrugs, suddenly listless, and drifts back to his magazine.

“Don’t lose any sleep, Shiro,” he says, the paper glossy and slipping away under his fingertips. He savagely flips past Farley Granger’s photograph. “I wouldn’t count on her any time soon.”

 

**July and August, 1965.**

 

“Have you ever seen one of them?” Keith overhears one of the other bartenders ask, curiosity high-bleed in his voice. Keith, badges in his jacket, jacket left in the room like an evidence exhibit, falters. _Immoral Minority Member._ He feels it beat under his skin. He forces himself to keep walking, not sure how fast or slow is natural, passing the bar with the sunlight searing across his shoulders like a spotlight. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Lance, shoulders brushing the other bartender’s, bring down a knife on a lime. His hands move faster and faster, seemingly intent.

“You know,” the other bartender continues, eyes very wide, “A Communist?” and Keith feels relief hit his veins like liquor even as he sees Lance bring down the knife harder. He can’t help it. Everyone else’s skin is second nature.

“Pal,” the third bartender goes, polishing glasses, both elbows resting on the marble countertop. “Are you looking at me? McClain’s right there, buddy.”

Lance looks up at Keith. There’s a faint startle in his eyes, something unsteady like a deer’s; an acrobat, caught on a pivot, trapped in the audience’s eyes. The mutual awareness it’s only years of sweat and effort that keep the acrobat out of the dust. Keith meets his gaze for a heady three seconds, deliberately cuts his eyes away to the clock, and then turns down the path towards the staff quarters.

“Sorry, boys,” he hears Lance say. He can imagine how Lance looks, already shrugging out of his jacket. “As much as I’d love to stay and chat, I’ve got somewhere to be and Castro stopped answering my calls. Try Moscow.”

“You’re a sarcastic son of a bitch, McClain,” one of them says, and Lance says, “Born and raised,” his voice growing fainter again as Keith slips further away from him. In the shadow of the staff quarters there’s the tradesman’s exit and Nyma’s dented yellow car idling by the gate.

“Lance’ll be pleased,” Nyma says, when Keith opens the car door and slides into the passenger seat next to her. She taps scarlatine nails against the wheel, one eye on the gate. “He’s got this thing about shotgun.”

“He can learn to share,” Keith says firmly, singing with nerves and excitement. He leans back in the seat, a line of hot vinyl against his spine, and Nyma laughs.

“Oh, boy.” She sounds unsurprisingly delighted. “Lance is so out of his depth here. You’re drowning him, kid.”

They share a sudden, twinned smile, and then Lance rounds through the gate, jacket and tie in one hand. He ducks into the backseat with a quick, furtive movement.

“Why’s Keith in the front?” Lance immediately complains, and Nyma snorts.

“Drowning,” is all she says, pointedly, and to Keith, before she swerves back onto the road in a spray of gravel. Lance leans between them without warning to switch on the radio, ignoring Nyma’s hand trying to bat his away. He jerks away from her, knocking against Keith in a blur of heat and cotton.

“Get out of here and be good for once,” Nyma tells him, “Keith’s gotta get changed.”

“What, now?” Lance says, his voice oddly high, at the same time as Keith goes, “But I’m already dressed.”

“Honey,” Nyma says, “Don’t fight me on this. This isn’t a tea dance down the country club with Susan. This is a fucking battlefield.” Keith opens his mouth. “Don’t say you don’t know a Susan. We both know you’re lying.”

Keith shuts his mouth.

“There’s some of Rolo’s clothes in the backseat, they should fit,” Nyma carries on, merging seamlessly with the main route towards the boardwalk. “Lance, stop looking at me like I’ve kicked you down the stairs. Close your eyes if you can’t help yourself.”  

“I’m not the one in here who can’t help themselves, Nyma,” Lance says, nasty on the syllables, shoving a pair of worn jeans and a t-shirt into Keith’s hands and throwing himself against the backseat. “We’ll switch at the next stoplight, alright, Keith?”

“Yeah, okay.”

It’s the first time Lance has directly addressed him since last night, when he’d said _you’re a bad idea, Keith,_ his eyes wild and honeyed with longing and the first taste of him in Keith’s own mouth _._ Right now, Lance has his arms folded and has his sightline firmly tethered to the window, face in profile, feet kicked up onto the seat.  

“Then you can get changed,” Lance continues without looking at him. “Since apparently we’re not waiting until we get to Hunk’s.”

“If you want to get changed together,” Nyma says sweetly, “Be my guest.”  

 _Lance hasn’t told her I kissed him,_ Keith thinks to himself. Nyma’s capable of being thoughtless, the kind of playful cruelty you’d expect from a cat, but she’s not heartless. In all honesty, he’s not sure whether the realisation makes things better or not. Lance is clearly jittery in the backseat, but between that and Keith’s silence she must be seeing stage fright, not some kind of murky half-rejection - not static on a record player and the way Lance’s hipbone had fit against the line of Keith’s hand.

“Light,” Nyma says, and Lance is out of the back door and opening the front one almost before she hits the brakes. He steps back when Keith gets out, almost as an afterthought, so their bodies don’t touch.

Keith waits until he’s in the backseat before unfolding the shirt and jeans, both of them soft under his hands, the denim faintly rough like a kitten’s tongue. Whoever Rolo is, and Keith’s still not sure, he’s only slightly taller and broader than Keith. It could be worse, it could be Lance’s clothes he was borrowing. He suppresses a guilty shiver at the idea.

He switches out his own button-up in favour, and looks up from pulling on the t-shirt to catch Lance’s eyes in the rearview mirror, hot despite the distance of the reflection. Their eyes stay locked for a second, Keith wondering if he looks as helpless as he feels, before Lance breaks it and leans forward to try and switch radio stations again. This time, he manages it.

“You nervous or something?” Nyma asks, voice pitched low over the thrum of the engine. Lance shrugs irritably, flicking through the stations before settling on one seemingly at random. They’re playing The Supremes. _I need you, but all you do is treat me bad._

Tonight, Keith decides miserably, is going to be a nightmare.

 

*

The club feels like a reverse descent into some kind of underworld; reverse in that every step down ricochets through Keith’s body like the music. Reverse, in that the fear is heady. Reverse, in that the fear is something rising, until it’s gone and Keith is stood, still alive, on the other side of it, with Lance at his back and watchful whilst Keith takes the place in properly.

“Oh, you’re new,” asks a man with glittering eyes by the foot of the stairs, blinking slowly at Keith. “I like new. This your first time?”

“Fuck off,” Lance cuts in, smiling with all his teeth, and tugs Keith away.  His hand is a brand around Keith’s wrist, and then he lets go again.

“I can pick my own fights,” Keith says, irritated, feeling the absence of Lance’s skin against his. Lance pretends not to hear him.

It’s an old storage basement, dark and windowless, condensation sitting heavy in Keith’s lungs. The lights cast odd shadows over strangers’ faces, illuminating the hollow of their open mouth, the whorl of their ear. Lance stands for a moment, eyes flickering around the room, before he turns to Keith.

“Stay with Hunk,” he says, louder than he needs to, “I’m going to go sign us up with Matt. Hunk, make sure nobody tries to eat Keith before I get back.”

“Sure thing,” Hunk says. Keith’s only known him half an hour, but he’s got the kind of agreeable, smiling face grandmothers love to pinch, the kind of body that means he probably walks home alone at night through the city whistling showtunes, and a job washing dishes in some boardwalk restaurant. Lance nods once, the line of his jaw sharp.

“What about Nyma?” Keith asks, and Lance raises his eyebrows and looks over Keith’s shoulder silently, until Keith turns. Nyma is half on top of a girl perched on the edge of a vinyl booth. Keith can’t exactly see where their lipstick merges, but he can see the splay of the other girl’s hand, a lighter brown against Nyma’s skin, and whips his head back around.   

“Nyma’s busy,” Hunk points out.

Keith doesn’t bother to reply. He watches Lance move through the chiaroscuro people, seamless, until he’s one of them; until Keith wonders how he ever thought otherwise. It’s like watching Lance shedding a skin. Out of his uniform and in a green t-shirt gone pastel with wear, the pale of it bright against his skin, Lance leans over the bar and taps the shoulder of a tall man with messy auburn hair, the glass of his spectacles glinting in the light. Watching them, with the music sliding up from under his feet like a secondary heartbeat, with the shifting colours and noise, Keith has the sensation of being underwater.    

He catches Hunk’s eye. Hunk smiles, half-conspiratorial, half-knowing. Feeling caught out, Keith shoves his hands in the pockets of his borrowed jeans and deliberately turns to scan the booths. The scratch of the denim against his fingernails is half-familiar.

“I don’t need you to stay with me,” Keith starts.

“So,” Hunk interrupts easily, “Shay and I have two dollars riding on Lance having lied through his teeth about you.” Keith’s heart jolts in his chest. When he looks to Hunk, he’s still smiling. Hunk shrugs at him, palms outstretched. “Want to help a guy out?”

“I don’t know what he’s told you,” Keith says, and Hunk snorts.

“He said you’re a new waiter at the Belvedere, and Nyma liked you so I should shut up and stop asking him about it. _And_ I was gonna give you the benefit of the doubt before you showed up in those shoes.”

“What’s wrong with my shoes?”

Keith glares down at his sneakers, and Hunk grins even wider.

“There’s not a waiter in Miami with soles that new, pal,” Hunk tells him. “Yours are practically glowing.” He sighs, the displacement of the air shifting his massive shoulders with the weight of it. Keith reminds himself he hasn’t got anything to feel guilty about, but it’s hard when Hunk goes, “I’m not mad at you, dude, alright? You weren’t to know. Lance doesn’t lie without a good reason. What he thinks is a good reason, anyway.”

“Isn’t a hundred fifty dollars a good reason?”

Hunk shrugs again, leaning back against the wall and folding his arms. Keith winces. He can see the way condensation makes the plaster damp from here.

“See,” Hunk says quietly, “That’s a rich kid thing to say. Right there.”

Before Keith can figure out what he means, Lance is there again.  

“It’s done,” he says, grinning excitedly. Keith immediately forgets the drag of the shadows, Hunk’s quiet voice, how truth in the absence of light makes the whole of the basement feel like the centre of some kind of devil’s pact - all of it in favour of how Lance holds out his hand. “Let’s go. Don’t get lost, okay?”

“What new shit has Matt been throwing at you,” Hunk says, his grin a mirror to Lance’s. Infectious; infected. “I’m not holding your head over a bucket all night, buddy.”

“It’s a competition night,” Lance says dismissively, almost jumping up and down on the spot, impatient. The light in his eyes seems to have spread under his skin. His eyes look like a stained glass window.  “I’m not drinking on a competition night.” When he notices Keith still hasn’t taken his hand, his face falls, and he pulls back a bit. Keith reaches across the scant distance and grabs him.

“I’m gonna wait for Shay,” Hunk says and then, suddenly urgent as Lance turns back towards the crowd, “Lance, you know what you’re doing, right?”

Lance looks at Hunk, still holding onto Keith, and visibly hesitates. It only lasts for a second, before he laughs. It’s not a nice laugh, but it’s not a bad one either.

“Jesus Christ,” Lance says, “I hope not.”

As he drags Keith after him into the crowd, there’s some kind of quick and devastatingly, deceptively simple slide of their hands. Keith feels Lance lace their fingers together and doesn’t fight it. _You’re a bad idea, Keith._ Keith probably is. Keith definitely is. Keith is surrounded by strangers he could have - surrounded by safer options in the middle of an illegal queer bar, for fuck’s sake - and he has Hunk’s words, cautious and ringing at his back. He still holds onto Lance like he’s Keith’s last tether to the world outside, and not the red string reeling him in.  

“What about Nyma?” Keith remembers, half-turning. He can’t see anymore, the bodies around him swallowing up the light, his sneakers sticking to the floor with the memory of spilled drinks.  

“Yeah, we’re not getting Nyma back, Keith,” Lance says, laughing. They make it to the other side of the floor, stumbling. Keith trips, throws up his other hand to steady himself, unwilling to let go of Lance, and looks up to find he’s gripping onto the arm of a complete stranger.

“Oh, shit,” Keith mutters, taking him the stranger, all pale face and spit-shiny lips, how he’s hooked around a second stranger’s body, both of them staring at him with dark, confused eyes. “Wow, sorry.” After a beat, he lifts his hand off the guy’s arm. “Shit. Yeah, sorry. I’ll - you two just - carry on, yeah? Have a fun night!”

He hears an ugly snorting noise from nearby, and thinks very vividly about strangling Lance McClain.

“Is that an offer, babydoll?” one of them says. Lance’s hand tightens reflexively against his, then loosens. It takes Keith another beat, and then he feels his face flood with colour. One of them throws his head back and laughs. Keith is struck dumb by the line of his throat, the faint bleed of freckles on his shoulders, the bruise of their mouths.

Keith hadn’t ever seen two men kissing before tonight. He’s kissed one and he still hadn’t seen it. It’s everywhere he looks right now, and he didn’t know it looked like that. _You look like a bad idea, Keith._ Keith thinks: _maybe I don’t have to be yours, if I’m causing you that much trouble. Nobody said I had to be._

“Look at him,” the other one says, “You feel like crossing both of us off your list, darling?”

Before he can reply, he feels heat where Lance has pushed closer to him, so close he can feel the way Lance’s heart thuds in his chest, pressed against Keith’s shoulder.  

“Sorry,” Lance says, voice like frost. He doesn’t say anything else. He just stands there, watching the couple with steady, cold eyes, until the first one shrugs and huffs.

“Huh,” he says. “I used to have a boy like that. He was - you know what, have a nice night.”  

“Are you done?” Lance cuts across him, and barely draws breath before continuing. Keith feels the thready inhale of it against his shoulder. “I think you’re done.”

Keith watches Lance watch the two of them walk away. Lance’s expression is familiar. It takes him a second to place it: Lance the first time he’d seen Keith.

The slow boil of anger, of confusion, of all the noise in Keith’s head, rises up so rapidly he’s overwhelmed by the static. _You’re drowning him, kid._ Keith puts his hand on Lance’s arm and Lance looks at him, snapped out of it, surprised.

“Is there somewhere we can talk?” Keith grits out, the words staccato.

He manages to wait until they’re actually in the cloakroom - Lance having some low-voiced conversation with the coat boy about covering him whilst he takes a break, the coat boy looking behind to Keith and rolling his eyes before giving Lance the key - before losing his temper.

“This is the last time I’m dancing with you,” Keith says, not even realising the ultimatum is resting, lead-weight in his mouth, not until he coughs it out and has the satisfaction of watching Lance’s face go white. “We’re going to win,” Keith continues, the numb feeling spreading outwards as he watches Lance watch him, very still, tracking Keith with his eyes only. “And then you’re - and then you’re going to get out of my way.”

“You didn’t -” Lance looks incredulous. “You didn’t actually want to go with them, did you?”

“That’s not something you’re deciding for me,” Keith retorts, voice rising. “I can’t have you right there if you can’t - you have to decide if I can have you. Because you said I can’t, and that - that means you can’t pull things like that. You couldn’t talk for me if I was - and I’m not - you don’t talk for me. You don’t decide for me and you don’t - we’re not -”

“We’re not?” Lance leans back against the counter, crossing his arms. “We’re not _what_? As opposed to what?”

“You said I was a bad idea,” Keith spits at him, “Don’t make this about -”

“About me?” Lance raises both eyebrows. “You kissed me. At my work. Where you’re staying as a guest. Where I have your brother’s drink order memorised. Keith, what did you think I was going to do, fall all over you - please, Keith, let me lie down so you can walk over me -”

“Then why did you kiss me back?” Keith demands. Lance falls silent. Keith takes one step forward, then another, gaining ground whilst Lance watches him approach without moving. Lance’s face is wary, and he’s still holding his body still; Keith has a sudden, vivid memory of Darla’s hand, its lacquered fingertips shiny and unwanted on Lance’s waist, and retreats so fast he knocks into the coat rack. He hears the hangers jostle behind him, clattering.  

He looks where Lance still hasn’t moved, backed against the countertop, watchful and silent.

“If you don’t want me, just tell me,” Keith mutters finally, keeping his eyes on Lance’s. “I’m not a kid, I’m not going to go crying to someone -”

He sees the exact moment Lance blinks, surprised.

“Who said I didn’t want you?” Lance frowns at him. It rises in Keith, a shiver of heat and hope. “I can’t lose my job, Keith.”

He says it without any kind of inflection, without any self-deprecation. Matter-of-fact, his eyes steady on Keith. The sky is blue, Keith is eighteen years old, and Lance can’t lose his job.

It’s the first time Lance has said this out loud to Keith, but it doesn’t feel like he’s hearing something new. The inescapability of it settles on him.

“Okay,” Keith says.

“Okay?”

“Yeah, okay.”

Lance looks at Keith and makes a low, helpless, frustrated noise. His hands, loose at his sides, clench and unclench. He’s nervous, Keith notices, then remembers: _I make him nervous._  

“I don’t want anything from you,” Keith says, “It’s fine,” and Lance’s mouth slips into a line.

“You’re lying.”

“I don’t want anything that you don’t want,” Keith amends. “That’s not a lie.”

“It’s still not fine,” Lance mutters, and abruptly marches over to Keith. His hands, when he cups them around Keith’s face, are a shock. They stare at each, locked. “It’s still not fine.”

“Are you going to kiss me?” Keith asks, as the seconds tick by and they remain, unmoving, heedless of the noise outside.

“I’m thinking about it.”

“Stop thinking,” Keith snaps back, and Lance makes an annoyed noise and kisses him. One of Keith’s hands immediately flies out to brace himself on something, anything, grazing past the coat rrack and meeting only air. He stumbles and Lance turns him, walks him backwards until Keith’s back is against the edge of the cloakroom’s countertop. Keith makes a small noise at the impact and Lance pulls back, mouth slightly open. He looks over Keith’s shoulder at the crowd. He licks his lips, gaze darting to Keith.

“No takebacks,” Keith says, “Stop thinking,” and twists both his hands in the fabric of Lance’s t-shirt, his skin against faded green cotton. It’s unbearably soft. Keith hauls Lance down, pulls Lance against him, leans up: lets himself be pinned by Lance’s hips. He can imagine how they look now and it makes his stomach twist.

The song changes. It takes Keith until the chorus to notice; takes Lance leaning back and running his thumb over the seam of Keith’s mouth, his eyes aching; takes Keith hearing the clatter of a plastic token on the counter and Lance freezing against him. Keith turns his head.

“Number fifty-three,” says a tall woman on the other side of the countertop, pearl-lacquered fingertips toying with the pink of cloakroom token she’s put down, “When you’ve got a minute.” She smiles at Keith, amused by whatever expression he’s making. “Don’t worry, you can have him back -”

“Sure,” Lance says, swiping the token, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He moves backwards, out of Keith’s hold. “Fifty-three.”

Her coat is dark red. Keith watches Lance hand it over absently, and then grabs for Lance’s wrist, the fine bones of it under his fingers. Keith hears the laughter of the leaving woman absently, too busy with yanking Lance’s shirt out from his waistband, shaking with want, and sliding one hand underneath. Seeing Lance gasp and feeling the way it makes him move at the same time makes Keith shiver. Lance grabs Keith’s wrist in turn.

“Do you want to stop?” Keith asks. Lance shakes his head and kisses him again, hard and brief on Keith’s mouth, and knots his fingers into Keith’s hair like anchor when Keith tilts Lance’s jaw to kiss him back. Keith loses time again, swallowing down his own heart over and over, trying his best not to draw blood. He wonders for a moment, dizzily, where the cloakroom boy got to, whether he’s ever coming back. Keith really, really hopes he’s never coming back.

 _You’d burn down the whole state for the right girl._ The taste of Lance in his mouth is gunpowder.

Then, there’s a sudden clamour over by the bar: someone is stood on the bartop, one of the staff, whistling long and loud, over and over, the peal of it searing into Keith’s head. In his arms, Keith feels Lance jolt at the noise, and he wrenches his mouth back, eyes wild without what they were doing.

“What’s happening?” Keith shouts, confused over the racket. Lance’s breath is shallow on his face, his eyes fear-bright when he turns them on Keith.

“It’s a warning,” he says, white-knuckled and clutching onto Keith’s wrist, then sliding his fingers down and twisting until he’s holding Keith’s hand, for the second time outside of a dance, and Keith barely only has a beat to enjoy it. “They’re getting raided.”

The music is still going, but under it, Keith can hear the sound of running feet, a door being battered down from upstairs, police whistles drowning out the thirty-second warning from the bar.

“Fucking shit, they’re here fast,” Lance hisses, face paling. His hand is clammy where it holds Keith. “We need to - we need to get to the car, Nyma will - Nyma’ll find us there.” Lance turns and starts to yank them into the crowd, which is abruptly swirling like a tidal pool inverted, everyone trying to get from the centre out. From above, there’s the crack as the door is forced open, steel-toed boots on stairs. Glass shatters. Someone screams. Lance’s grip on Keith’s hand is bruising, Lance throwing all of his weight behind pulling Keith along behind him, dragging them through the crowd that is oddly slow in the chaos, made sticky with panic. The eye of the storm. Lance is so much stronger than he looks, bone grinding against bone as his hold on Keith only tightens, Keith stumbling in his sudden, vicious wake. Beside them, someone else, fleeing their way, trips. Keith doesn’t see them go down, but he feels the displacement of air, hears them cry out, the sound sharp and frail, hanging after him in the air, reaching over the smashing glass and the police whistles.

“Lance,” he shouts, trying to dig his heels in, skidding on spilt liquor, turning back to try and find whoever it was. He didn’t even see their face. He didn’t even - “Lance, we have to go back.”

Lance looks over his shoulder, face hardening at whatever he sees there, and doesn’t slow down.

Keith tries to grind them to a stop again.

“Lance, someone’s hurt -” he tries.

“Do you think I can’t see it?” Lance shouts at him, eyes glinting in the half-light, eyes hollow, darkling eyes. “Do you think I’m fucking blind, Keith? We have to leave.”

His gaze keeps snagging just behind Keith’s shoulder, both of them buffeted by strangers like a breaking tide. Keith makes to turn around.

“Don’t look,” Lance tries to warn him, but Keith’s never been good at taking orders. He turns his head. He sees a girl being dragged by her hair across the floor; a boy biting into a policeman’s arm; someone in uniform kicking down the locked bathroom door, the noise of wood splintering like fingernails. The bartender who’d whistled out the warning is being cuffed, hands behind his back, held down against the bar by the back of his neck.

Keith doesn’t realise he’s shaking until Lance is pulling at him again, not gently but with care. He feels the tremble in his legs as they make it to the backstreet stairs, his breath burning. The first cut of clean air in his lungs leaves him gasping, ignites the sweat on his skin until he feels his own body heat slip away from him. _Some say the world will end in fire; others say in ice._ Keith tries not to laugh.  

The fire doors are heavy, swinging back and forth, slowing the crowd down, clattering into people like dominoes. Keith knows this is the hinge a night turns nasty on - shit like this is what sent the ambulances to Shiro’s campus during the desegregation riots. The police sirens a faint, wailing tear in the air; Keith sitting at the window all day with his math homework, till he can barely see his own pencil in the dying light; wondering what time Shiro will get home, in what state. The sound of Shiro’s key in the door; the curl of his mouth exhausted; bruises underneath his shirt that Keith sees shadowed in the slow way Shiro moves around their kitchen.  

“We have to find a way to hold the doors open,” Keith shouts to Lance over the noise of the crowd. “We have to, else no one’s getting out. Else we’re not getting out.”

“You think anyone’s gonna volunteer to be left behind like that?” Lance hisses back, and then looks properly at Keith’s face. “No. Keith, no. Keith, you really - Keith -”

“I’m not asking you to help me,” Keith says to him, voice firm. He lets go of Lance’s hand, certainty in his spine, steps away from Lance when Lance moves forward to try and grab him back again. He turns and shoves his way through the crowd, ducking his head down against it, hands outstretched in front of him.

The door is heavy. It takes all of Keith’s strength to keep it levered open; he slips behind it, but there’s no chain, so he can’t just leave it be. _Why can’t you just leave things be, Keith?_ He can’t see properly, but he can see people passing him by, knows it from the way they send the door buffeting back against his chest like trying to stand in the middle of the storm. _Hold fast._ Keith holds.The push of the crowd steadies out, abruptly and without warning. When he’s sure he can keep on his feet enough to look around the door, the black paint of it flaking off under his hands, Keith does.

Lance is on the other side of the crowd, holding the opposite door open. His expression is hard, his eyes almost constantly hovering at whatever waits just inside the doorway, just out of Keith’s sightline. Keith has always known Lance is light on his feet, but right now, poised on the axis of fight or flight, Lance’s grip on the door looks like it’s the only tether he has left. It’s at odds with the panic in his eyes, as though the texture of the black paint under his fingertips is the only thing stopping him from bolting.

Another rush of people sends Keith ricocheting back on his feet. He stumbles backwards at the same time he sees Lance do the same. For a split-second, they’re mirrors, but then yet another wave of people crash past them and Keith sees Lance trip backwards, sees his hand miss the door for balance, sees Lance drop.

Keith lets go of his side of the door.

He makes it past about five people before he feels someone grab his arm. They twist it behind Keith’s back, and Keith, on instinct, swings his other arm around behind him in a punch, trying to fight out of the hold for all he’s worth.

In the backyard of their townhouse in Washington, the afternoon light had dappled across Shiro’s arm as he held it, outstretched, to Keith, laughing breathlessly on the ground, his legs taken out from under him.

 _Keith,_ Shiro had said, eyes opaque, _Keith, come on. This isn’t a game._

“I wouldn’t do that if I was you,” he hears, as Keith twists in the rapidly thinning crowd enough to realise he’s been held by a thirty-something man in a blue jacket and cap. Keith’s gaze snaps to the door, to where Lance fell and back. The man raises his eyebrows, and says, “Looking for someone?”

Lance is nowhere to be seen. Keith shuts his mouth so fast his teeth clack together.

“How old even are you, kid?” the officer says, taking a long look at Keith’s face. Keith looks at him and says nothing, trying to force his expression from mutinous to blank. “Hey, kid.” The officer jostles Keith in his hold. “You’re supposed to talk. Cat got your tongue?”

“No,” Keith says finally. “I’m refusing to answer.” A beat. The words are memory. The words are his parents sat at the table with clients, shadowy in Keith’s childhood. The words are Shiro, talking to Allura on the telephone in the hallway, voice pitched low: _I’ll be right there. I’m on my way. Don’t say anything. Take the Fifth._ “On the grounds that it may -”

“Yeah, yeah,” the officer mutters, tightening his fingers around Keith’s wrists. The handcuffs click against his skin and settle there, warmed by the officer’s hands. Keith’s imagined this so many times, the reality of the axe falling is only absently horrifying. “You and every other - you know what, just get in the fucking van.”

Keith is eighteen years old, the sky is blue, and Lance can’t lose his job. Keith grits his teeth. Keith gets in the fucking van.

 

*

“Kogane,” the officer says outside the cell, keys jangling. “Keith Kogane?”

He mispronounces it, but Keith’s had practise with that. Keith stands up, conscious of the way his shirt is torn at the shoulder, the blood on his chin, the memory of Lance’s mouth. There’s a low wolf-whistle from someone else in the cell, which he ignores. He tilts his head back and meets the officer’s eyes, and makes his face blank again. When he was little, Shiro used to call it _disappearing_ , the way something in Keith went out at the eyes _. Keith, you’ve got to stop disappearing on me._

“I’m here,” he says, feels the jolt of relief sear through him when the officer swings the door open, letting it clatter back against the bars, other men in the cell struggling out of the way of the gate’s upswing.  

“Just you,” he adds. “Your girlfriend’s come to bail you out.”  

For a moment, Keith thinks _Lance is here?_ before remembering Shiro’s clipped voice before the dial tone, Keith’s hand hot on the cool of the phone set when his turn in the queue for a call came up _._

“Can your girlfriend bail me out, too, cutie?” a guy calls over, batting his eyelashes as Keith heaves his way past. Keith pretends he hasn’t heard. “Don’t look so miserable. You’re not going to meet your Maker.”

“No,” Keith retorts, “Just my brother.”

“Well, shit, honey,” the same guy says. “Good fucking luck.”

Keith’s mouth twitches. He can’t help it. He says, “Thanks. That’s not my name,” and steps outside.  

“Hey, are you single?” the guy shouts against the closing of the door, and Keith snorts despite the roiling feeling in his stomach. The officer shoves him, hard, and he stumbles forward a few steps.

“Face at the wall,” the officer says. Keith turns his face to the wall. “Hands behind your back.” Keith puts his hands behind his back. _Pick your battles,_ he reminds himself, when the officer jostles him hard to pull him back from the wall and turn him to face the end of the corridor.

“Start walking.”

The officer shoves him again. Keith starts walking. The cuffs are growing familiar, though the strain they’re putting on his shoulders trickles under his skin like electricity, muscles protesting. For a moment, with the flare of it, Keith is back at the fire exit doors, shoring them open with all his weight and all his faith, keeping his eyes locked on Lance’s face in the spaces between the constant stream of people fleeing into the night.

When he’s back there in his memory, he can almost tell himself he’s sure Lance got away. He must have. Had they brought them all to the same precinct? Would Keith know if they had? He scans through the open bars as best he can as they pass the next row of cells, blocking out the sound of their inhabitants rattling the doors. They’re shouting about phone calls, about Amendments, about him, the latter barely pinpricks. Keith blocks them out. Disappearing.

He doesn’t see Lance, and then they’re through the open doors, and he sees Shiro instead. The first thing he notices is that Shiro’s wearing a suit, even though it was long after midnight when Keith had called him. It’s the suit he wears when sitting in on courtrooms; not black like Keith’s upcoming funeral, but navy blue, because Shiro had never worn the good suit he’d dressed in the day of Mom and Dad’s funeral ever again, because Shiro had never worn a black suit without tension settling into his shoulders since. It should be comforting. It’s not, because the second thing he notices is Shiro’s eyes and the look there. Disappointment. Keith ducks his head and stares at the floor.

“Here he is,” the officer on duty at reception says. The officer behind Keith leans in and undoes the handcuffs, the release of his arms like miracle, the officer’s breath uncomfortable on the back of Keith’s neck. “You’d be better keeping a closer eye on your brother in future, Mr. Shirogane.”

“Yes, Officer.” Shiro’s smile is tight, a line in the sand: _here and no further._ “I’ll keep it in mind. Keith, we’re leaving.”

“Lucky for you, kid,” the officer says from behind his desk as Keith rolls his shoulder and waits for him to retrieve his belongings on arrest. “I’ve never seen anyone write a cheque quite as fast as your brother.”

They both laugh. Keith tenses. Shiro, already with the door half open, pauses whilst the officer spends a long time ostensibly looking for the brown paper bag of Keith’s belongings. He spends so long Shiro closes the door again.

“In a hurry, Mr. Shirogane?” the other officer asks, smiling with all his teeth. He’s pronouncing it wrong. Keith’s sure it’s deliberate.

“I understand how procedure takes time, Officer,” Shiro replies, smiling with all of his. “We have similar in Washington.”

“Long way from home, aren’t you, Mr. Shirogane? Did you drive?” The officer eyes the pinned sleeve of Shiro’s coat. “Must be a long drive for you.”

“I imagine it’s a long drive for anyone.”

The officer finally locates the paper bag and tips it up on the desk in front of Keith, sending items spiralling. Keith makes a grab for his copy of the car keys, but the officer scoops them out of his reach.

“Ah, ah, ah,” he scolds. “I’ve to get the paperwork.”

Keith scowls down at his own driving license, face up on the reception desk. The ring he’d been wearing - the one that had caused a cut on an officer’s lip - rolls off the desk. He moves out and stops it with his foot. Shiro shoots him a look, subtle but alarmed.

“Can I get that?” he grits out. When the other officer nods, he leans down and picks it up. The officer behind the desk locates the paperwork and goes, “Keith Kogane. One driving license in his name. One wallet. One chequebook, also in his name. A set of keys. One lapel pin badge for -” The officer frowns down at it, and flicks it across the desk at Keith, who catches it before it hits the floor. “One lapel pin badge. Two rubber bands. One ball point pen.” He raises his eyebrows at Keith over the page, his eyes darting to Shiro, and smirks at him. “One prophylactic. Didn’t think you lot needed those.”

Keith tells himself he’s not embarrassed, it’s just the heat of the lights, the old sweat from the club and the raid sticking to his back. He bites back a retort, picks up his stuff, puts it back in his pockets, and walks out before Shiro, leaving him to follow: all without saying a word.

He makes it to the car in record time.

“Keith,” Shiro snaps, following him, “Don’t make me do this out here. I will, but I’d rather you didn’t make me -”

Keith unlocks the car, and gets into the driver’s seat. He’s shaking with anger, he realises. His hands are unsteady on the wheel, his fingers white-knuckled. The vinyl of the seat crackles as he shifts.

“I’ll drive,” is all he says.

“No, you can’t,” Shiro says. He opens the door before Keith can lock it, a habit from previous arguments.

“I still have my license.”

Shiro eyes the raw marks on Keith’s wrists from the handcuffs pointedly. Keith lets go of the wheel to yank his sleeves down over his hands with still-trembling fingers, only it rips the torn sleeve even further and -

“Keith, get out of the car,” Shiro says. “I’m driving.”

“You’re not Dad,” Keith hisses, but does what Shiro says. He’s getting sick of taking other people’s orders, and it’s only been happening for about five hours: he can’t imagine how Lance has been doing it for years.

 _Lance,_ Keith thinks, remembers what the officers had said about the cheque. Lance, who’d talked about _they give me twenty dollars like it’s fuckin’ nothing. It’s nothing to them,_  in the studio whilst Nyma sighed in agreement _._ Lance, who’d kissed him in a cloakroom, in front of a whole crowd, and sighed _what am I doing_ against Keith’s mouth like he was bleeding out a secret.

“How much was my bail?” he asks quietly, after Shiro gets his driving prosthetic out of the trunk and shrugs out of his coat. Shiro glances over to him, surprised, mouth confused enough to turn out of being displeased for a second, and then drops his eyes back to strapping on his prosthetic over his shirt.

“It doesn’t matter,” Shiro says, “You weren’t staying there.”

“Shiro,” Keith says, “Tell me how much it was,” and Shiro sighs again.

“Nothing,” Shiro says, “Nothing, really. Maybe forty dollars? So, nothing. We have it. It’s not important.”

Lance makes forty dollars a week before tips. Keith knows this by accident, knows this from Nyma’s friends in the car tonight, from them turning around in their seats to say _you want to stick with this guy, he gets forty a week before tips_ ; from how Lance had gone bright red and gone _shut the fuck up_ whilst looking at Keith briefly, anxiously.  

 _We have it,_ Shiro had just said, as though it was simple as that.

“You shouldn’t have,” Keith says, and Shiro makes an impatient noise under his breath, his left hand dropping to shift gears.

“We’re not doing this when I’m driving, Keith,” Shiro says. “I need to concentrate.”

When Keith leans forward and turns on the radio, they get forty-five seconds of static and twenty seconds of an advertising jingle for toothpaste before Shiro leans over and switches it off. Keith turns his head and watches Miami slide by in the dark instead. He wonders where Lance’s family lives. Lance had said the other side of town. He wonders if Lance is there right now, having turned up on their doorstep, bruises on his mouth, saying he fell down some stairs to spare them the details. He wonders if Lance will be around the hotel tomorrow morning. He wonders who Lance would have gone to; how wonders if Lance would have gone to anyone, when there was forty dollars and his job on the line, or if he’d have sewn his own mouth shut and sat alone in the cell, nobody to come for him, watching the dawn light rising. Wouldn’t he have lost his job anyway if he hadn’t made his shift? Step on the cracks, you’ll break your mother’s back: _I can’t break her heart twice,_ Lance had said when Keith asked about her.

 _What happened the first time,_ Keith had asked, and Lance had looked at him, long and silent, and hadn’t replied. _It can’t have been deliberate._

_Who said it had to be?_

But he’s seen how Lance had held Nyma, her face to his chest, and whispered _it’s okay, I’m here. I’m here with you. It’s okay._ He can’t believe Lance capable of cruelty, not with someone he loves -

The key switching off the ignition startles Keith out of his thoughts. He looks out of the window, confused. They’re still two blocks away from the hotel, and Shiro’s parked them on a side-street, just out of the glow of the streetlights, in the dark circle beyond the orange glare.

“Shiro,” Keith says, “Why are we -”

“Tell me who you went with,” Shiro orders, his voice low. When Keith looks at him, Shiro is glaring out through the windshield at the streetlight, his fingers white-knuckled on the wheel. When Keith doesn’t reply, Shiro turns his face to look at him. Keith sees: anger, worry, disappointment. He sees Shiro at eighteen, stood in their hallway after their parents’ funeral, in that fucking suit he’s never worn since, talking quietly to the family solicitors and saying _I’m not going to be at college this fall. I’m going to get a job. I’ll sign everything you need. What do I have to tell them to make it enough? What do I have to do so I can keep him?_ It’s the same exact look: Shiro, floundering, treading water, fighting to drag them both ashore without knowing why, saying, _Stop saying adoptive. He’s my brother. He’s the only brother I have. They’re not taking him._ Shiro, in Keith’s corner seven bells into the match, saying _I just have to keep standing, right? That’s all I have to do to win, right? They’re going through me first, Keith. They’re going through me -_

Keith can’t open his mouth. Three hours ago, Lance had kissed him, fingertips light at Keith’s jaw, his other hand clenched into a fist at his side, as though he was scared what he might do with it if he let himself touch Keith properly. Keith swallows, hard, and shakes his head. Shiro makes a frustrated noise and looks back out of the window.

“They’re not worth it, Keith,” Shiro snaps, “Whoever they are.”

“I went on my own,” Keith lies. “I was there on my own.”

“I don’t believe you.” Shiro looks at Keith again out of the corner of his eyes, sharp, before sighing. “Keith. I know they’re from the hotel. You haven’t left it since we came here. I don’t want to get anyone in trouble, but -”

“Shiro, you can’t,” Keith says, desperately, “You can’t tell on people to management, they’ll throw them out.”

“I didn’t say anything about management,” Shiro says, his face like stone. “I want to know who thought it was okay to leave you alone back there. That’s not - that’s not what friends do, Keith. If they’re your friends, they’re bad at it.”  

There’s a silence.

“So they do work there, then,” Shiro adds, and Keith internally curses. The argument starts to bleed together then, starts to bleed in on itself.

“Shiro, you can’t -”

“Who’s the adult here again, Keith -”

“We both are!”  

“And some of us clearly aren’t used to what being an adult actually means -”

“I don’t have to tell you anything! You don’t have to tell anyone anything! I don’t ask you where you’ve been when you go out!”

“I don’t ring you from the fucking precinct! I don’t know the state law here, Keith!”  

“Stop acting like you’re a lawyer when you’re not even -”

“They were going to have you up under the penal code! Do you have any idea what could have happened?”

“Did you just ask me if I know what _the anti-sodomy law of the United States of America_ is?” Keith snarls, and Shiro flinches. “Yeah, I said it. I know what the law is, Shiro. I know the law, alright? This is federal level shit. This is everywhere.”

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you were so much easier when you were fifteen.”

“What, you don’t like it? If you’ve got a problem, I’ll fucking walk back to Washington.”

“Would I bail you out if I had -”

“Yeah,” Keith cuts him off, “Yeah, I think you would.” He throws himself back in his seat and turns away to look out of the passenger seat window, drawing his knees up to his chest. His whole body aches. “You’d do it for Mom and Dad or something. I don’t know.”

“Why would I do something for people who aren’t here anymore?” Shiro asks, using his calm voice, his fake voice, his veneer of responsibility that grates on Keith every time.

“Beats me,” Keith sneers. “I don’t see why you’re on a witchhunt. This job is all Lance has and you want to -”

He catches himself too late, clamps his mouth shut anyway. Tastes old blood.  

“Ah,” Shiro says. He has the good grace not to sound victorious, but right now that just makes Keith resent him more. “The bartender.”

He sounds surprised. Keith thinks of Gloria Hearst and how she fawns over Lance every chance she gets, something razored in the the way her nail polish glints when she reaches to take whatever he’s handing her, whatever he’s giving, smile like it’s more than what she’s paying for, smile like it’s exactly what she’s paying for -  

“Yes, fine,” Keith says, “The fucking bartender.”

The words are acidic in his mouth. _Who’s gonna believe my word over hers, Keith?_ Lance had said once, self-deprecating. _If it came down to it? I’m just the fucking bartender._

“Are you and him -”

When Shiro tries to put a hand on his shoulder, Keith shrugs him off with all his strength, then fumbles with the car door, unlocks it and gets out. He makes it halfway down the side road, shivering despite the heat of the night, before realising he doesn’t know the way back to the hotel.

So he gets back in the car. Shiro starts it, silently, and waits for Keith to shut the door. The two blocks to the hotel are an infinity. When Shiro has the car parked in the grounds, Keith turns to look at him.  

He says, “If you say his name to the management, I will never speak to you again.”

“I’m not doing anything tonight.” Shiro sounds weary. “I’m going to bed.”

“I mean it, Shiro.” Keith finds he does. He doesn’t need his brother to be infallible, but he does need Shiro to stay kind.

  
“If you’re going to be ungrateful, fine,” Shiro tells him, voice clipped; dismantling his prosthetic and throwing it into the backseat, which he never does. “You can lock the car up. Goodnight.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some quick historical notes: 
> 
> Segregation would've obviously affected where Shiro and Allura could go on dates, making their options limited. 'Going for a drive' is a euphemism for sex. The legal aid Shiro is helping out with is a support organisation for the Civil Rights movement; I imagine he's dispensing legal advice when needed, and paying bail for people. 
> 
> The song Lance is playing accidentally in Nyma's car is Baby Love by the Supremes.
> 
> The riots on Shiro's campus that are briefly mentioned are a reference to riots during this period about the desegregation of university campuses and enrollment of black students in 'whites-only' universities. 
> 
> Also, worldbuilding details-wise: Hunk is a trans man, Shay is his girlfriend and Nyma isn't straight. For those wondering about timeline, Shiro was born in the Japanese internment camps of the Second World War, and Shiro and Keith's parents campaigned for internment reparations from the government, as well as advising those affected by the witch-hunts under McCarthyism (which is what Keith is remembering when he pleads the Fifth).


	3. Chapter 3

**October, 1955**

 

Mr. Itagaki and his wife drive them to the courthouse. It’ll be another eight months before Shiro gets a new car, the right kind of prosthetic, and regains his driver’s license. For now, he sits next to Keith in the backseat, rendered alien - by the suit Mom and Dad had him save for weddings, the empty sleeve pinned up without Mr. Itagaki’s help, the distant expression in his eyes. Shiro’s physical recovery, Keith heard Mr. Itagaki say, has been startling, given the accident was only last December. He’d said that word exactly: _startling._ Keith had gone and asked his teacher about it later in homeroom, what it meant. When she’d asked where he’d learnt it, he’d just shrugged, remembering how Shiro had smiled.

“I’m very motivated, sir,” Shiro had said. So Keith told his teacher that, too.

Right now, Keith grows bored of watching the buildings blend into each other in the grey October morning. When he puts his hand on Shiro’s arm to get his attention, Shiro jolts minutely with surprise. _Startling: very surprising, astonishing or remarkable._ No, Keith decides. Startled. Past tense. Then Shiro turns to him and smiles, familiar, and puts his arm around Keith’s shoulders.

“How’re you doing?” Shiro asks, and Keith says, “I guess I’m something.”

Shiro laughs softly and says, “That’s not an answer, Keith,” before ruffling his hair.

“Hey!” Keith snaps, batting Shiro’s hands away, “Quit it!” It had taken Mrs. Itagaki a good quarter hour to tame Keith’s hair using half the pomade in the tin. Shiro laughs again, but he drops his hand.

“You kids alright back there?” asks Mrs. Itagaki now. She’s wearing her best dress suit.

“We’re doing grand,” Shiro says, although the reminder of her presence makes the smile slip from his face. Keith abruptly wishes they would all disappear. Since last December, there’s been strangers in their house, their kitchen, talking to Shiro in hushed voices and waiting for Keith when he comes home from school.

“Shiro,” Keith says.

“Hmmm?” Shiro is looking out of the window now, tapping his fingertips against Keith’s shoulder. Keith decides to let him get away with it.

“If I can’t stay with you, you’ll come visit me, right?”

Shiro goes very still. His fingers tighten briefly against Keith’s shoulder. He says, “Keith, I told you not to listen to people saying that.”

“People are still saying it, though,” Keith replies. Shiro sighs, and something goes panicky in Keith’s chest, curdled by the way Shiro’s eyes drop to the ground.

“We’re here,” Mr. Itagaki says, before Shiro can reply.

 

*

 

Outside the courtroom, in a corridor with shiny lacquered floors, Shiro looks down at Keith, waiting for him to retie his shoelace.

“Do you need me to -” Shiro begins.

“Shiro,” Keith says; he makes the name into a complaint. “I’m not a baby.” His mouth twists. “I’m not a baby and you’re not supposed to be a liar.”  

“Keith,” Shiro says, very quietly, pained under the echo of his voice in the hush. Keith glares down at his own shoes.

“If you’re not gonna visit me,” Keith mutters, “Just say, alright?”  

He doesn’t dare look up. As long as he can see the ground under his feet, he knows it’ll be there on the next step forward. He doesn’t know for sure otherwise. For all he knows, if he looks away, it’ll get the drop on him, disappear out from under his feet. Stability is a trick of the light. He can see a blurred version of a boy in his best suit in the polished floor. He’s staring at the boy, looking for his eyes, when Shiro hugs him. Keith immediately shoves him away, face burning, regretting it even as Shiro lets go.

“Listen to me,” Shiro says. His voice is the same voice Keith has been running after for years. “It’s you and me, yeah? We’ll make them see that. And if they don’t see it this time, they’ll see it the next time, because I promise you, Keith, I will sit in this goddamn courthouse every day ‘till you turn eighteen if I have to. Every single day.”

Shiro stopped swearing in front of Keith around the same time the house started to fill with strangers, half-familiar from Mom and Dad’s photo albums. Adults with hats and casserole dishes clasped in their hands, with eyes made ready for mourning. Adults taking Shiro’s hand in turn and pulling him, slow and inexorable, into their world of quiet politics, over the dining table and late into the night. Shiro’s learnt to talk like them. Hearing him talk now is like seeing a glimpse of something familiar, under the veil of Shiro’s careful smile.

“And you’ll come visit me,” Keith adds, stubborn. Shiro sighs, half-smiling, crooked and real.

“And I’ll come visit you,” he echoes.

“Okay,” Keith says, then louder, “Okay.”

“It’s time,” Mr. Itagaki calls down the corridor. Shiro turns to Keith, a little urgent.

“I’ve told you this already,” Shiro tells him, and Keith rolls his eyes. Shiro’s getting into the habit of repeating himself a lot these days. “I know, I know, but I’m saying it again. The people in there don’t care what Mom and Dad were really like, Keith. Whatever they say, whatever I say - sometimes, you have to tell people the story they want to hear. You remember Mom saying that?”

“I remember.”

Keith isn’t stupid. He knows Mom and Dad’s politics weren’t the same as their neighbours because they didn’t look like most of their neighbours.

“So that’s what we’re going to do,” Shiro says. “We’re going to tell them a story they want to hear, and then we can go home.” He reaches down and takes Keith’s hand in his.

“I’m not scared,” Keith points out.

“I’m not holding your hand,” Shiro tells him. “You’re holding mine. Let’s go.”

 

**July and August, 1965**

 

Lance is missing from the bar all of the next morning. Keith watches, and waits, anxiety a sickly, filthy roil in his stomach. Lance still doesn’t appear.

Shiro isn’t talking to Keith, beyond limited queries: _are you coming to breakfast this morning? Are you staying out on the lawn today? Do you need anything from the drugstore?_ Yes, yes, no. Shiro catches Keith looking over at the bar again from where they’re sat on the patio in wrought-iron chairs, eyes loud over the crackle of the _New York Times_ underneath Shiro’s fingertips. The condensation on Keith’s glass of grapefruit juice is a strange kind of anchor. Keith tightens his hold when he sees Shiro’s eyes narrow. His wrists ache under the weight of his jacket.

Without warning, Shiro stands up, leaves the newspaper unfolded, and heads towards the bar. Shiro is immaculate in shirtsleeves, even at nine-thirty in a morning. Everything about the set of his shoulders has been manicured into likeability.  Panic sweeps through Keith like a final rush of blood. Unable to move, he barely hears Shiro give his usual order, but swallows down the feeling of his body turning to radio static just in time to hear Shiro go, “Isn’t there usually another one of you here?”

“Oh, you mean McClain, right?” the bartender says, “The Cuban, right?”

“Maybe,” Shiro says, taking the pen offered to him and signing the receipt on its gilded tray, slow and even, by rote, by muscle memory.  “I couldn’t tell. Did he quit?”

“Not likely,” the bartender says, “He’s sending money back home or something, isn’t he? Nah, he’s never even called in sick before. Rang in this morning and said he’d tripped down the stairs.” The bartender leans forward, all elbows. His tone is gossipy when he adds, “If you ask me, I think he walked down the wrong street last night. Someone decided they didn’t like the look of him.”

“That happens,” Shiro murmurs, sliding the tray back. The faint grate of it against the marble makes the bartender blink. Keith can see the moment he remembers who he’s talking to, stumbling over Shiro’s pinned sleeve, his name on the receipt, his face; sees the bartender do the maths backwards in his head and realise Shiro would’ve been learning to walk when Pearl Harbour was hit.

At the bar, there’s a sticky, residual silence. Keith’s heart beats under it, a hollow-sounding thing.

“Will that be everything then, sir?” the bartender asks, halfway to embarrassed.

“Yes,” Shiro replies, his pronunciation all Northern state syllables, crisped by law school, “That’s everything. Send your colleague my regards.”

 _He didn’t tell them,_ Keith thinks wildly, relief lurching through him as he watches Shiro walk back and slide into his seat, expression pinched. _He didn’t -_

“You didn’t tell them,” he says out loud. Shiro, midway through turning a page, pauses, and looks at him.

Here’s the thing: Keith does remembers a younger Shiro, one who cried over skinned knees and slammed his door and picked fights at school. A fourteen-year-old Shiro who had black eyes, who made people use the word _precocious,_ who had half the girls on the street doe-eyed when he walked Keith home from kindergarten. Shiro, sneaking him Hershey’s and smiling a familiar, fierce grin that Keith learnt to mimic back. Keith had adored him, and somewhere, he’d lost him, and now, looking at Shiro’s crestfallen face, Keith knows he’s hurt him but not how.

Shiro lets go of the page. It falls back into place with a barely-there whisper.

“I don’t know why you think I would,” he admits. His voice already quiet, his eyes spark when a waiter walks by and he lowers it further.

Here’s another thing: Keith knows Shiro was six when they let him and Mom and Dad out of the camp. There’s a photograph of them that he hasn’t seen since they died, of a younger Shiro solemn-eyed in between the two of them, surrounded by their adult height. Their neat-collared silhouettes looked so seemingly normal it was as though they’d been cut out and pasted into this new skyline, the tracery of the barbed wire about their heads strange birds trapped in flight. Made extinct.  

Keith stares at Shiro, unsure of what to say. Shiro, for his part, doesn’t seem to want to look at him, fussing with a corner of the newspaper till the newsprint smudges his thumb. Words flaking off, words under the skin. When Keith glimpses Nyma, clearly scanning the breakfast tables, he nearly jumps out of his own skin with relief at the excuse to leave. He feels Shiro watch him go.

 

*

 

“He’s fine,” Nyma tells Keith immediately. She looks exhausted, the slide of her lipstick uneven as the collar of her shirt dress, daffodil-yellow like sunlight lapping hungry at her skin. “He was up all night out of his head, so he’s tired, and it’s not like we were going to let him sleep anyway, we weren’t sure how hard he’d hit the floor -”

Keith doesn’t bother asking why they hadn’t taken Lance to the hospital. Pick a card, pick a reason.  

“Where is he now?” Keith asks. Nyma rolls her eyes.

“He’s sat at the drugstore. Dropped his inhaler in the crowd.” Keith winces, remembering the glint of grey plastic from between Lance’s fingers, Lance holding the inhaler to his mouth on breaks, irritable when Nyma ever mentioned it. “He was going to try and come in without one, but -” She shrugs. “He can’t afford not to.”

He probably can’t afford to, either. Keith doesn’t know how much an inhaler costs. He’s never needed to know.

“What about you?” he asks instead. There’s a tiny cut, just above her left eye. She’s tried to cover it with powder, but it’s impossible to hide when they’re this close. For a moment, she looks surprised. Her own fingers reach to the cut, smoothing over it, nail polish shimmering creamy in the light.

“Head wounds always look worse than they are,” she says, dismissive. “You should remember that, when you see him. He hates fussing.”

“I don’t think he wants to see me,” Keith admits, leaden with it.  

“When he wasn’t bleeding all over my car, he was yelling his head off about going back to get you,” Nyma tells him, trying to sound annoyed. She mostly sounds tired.

“He was bleeding?” Keith echoes, shocked, then thinks: _of course he was. Don’t be stupid. She said it looks worse than it is. He was asking for me?_ “Didn’t he tell you? It was my fault. It was my idea.”

Nyma looks at him, then snorts.

“Cute,” she says. “He said the same thing.”

“Oh,” Keith says. He’s not sure what he’s feeling exactly, only that it feels like it’s taken him out at the knees.  She takes one look at his face and snorts again, louder.

“Did you get picked up?”

Keith pulls back the cuff of his jacket. She looks down at his wrist and whistles, long and low.

“That’s some shit luck, kiddo. Did you get your phone call?”

“Shiro came down to the station.” Her eyes widen. “It’s cool,” he lies. “He was cool about it.”

Keith manages not to wither under her gaze, but then she shifts it to over his shoulder, in Shiro’s direction. Somehow, that’s worse.

“Uh huh,” she says, sounding unconvinced. “Do I need to tell Lance not to bother coming by?”

“He’s coming back today?”

The look she gives Keith is telling.

“He’s picking up the afternoon shift. Just so long as your brother isn’t making a call to management or anything.” She raises her eyebrows, seemingly flippant, but her eyes are searching. “I’m not sending him in here to have his face busted twice in a week. He’s got a family thing on Sunday.”

“He was cool about it,” Keith repeats firmly. She stares him down. He doesn’t give ground. Eventually, she sighs.

“Sure he was.” She taps her foot, looks away, then back. “I’m sorry we left you, Keith,” she says, all of a rush. “But I couldn’t have gone back.”

“I know,” Keith replies, because he does. “I’m sorry he got blood on your car.”

“Not as sorry as he’ll be.” She checks her wristwatch. “Look, Keith, I have to -”

“And I’m sorry we didn’t win for you,” he adds, and her face goes still.

“You’re a sweet kid,” she murmurs, after a skipped beat. When she makes an excuse to leave, Keith barely listens. He just watches her round the corner, noticing how for all her height, she still seems smaller close up, cut or no cut, her powder visible: a matter of reverse perspective.

 

*

 

When Keith lets himself into the studio, ten minutes past the hour like usual, like habit, and sees Lance sat in a corner of the room, shadowed, his head tilted back and eyes closed -

People say relief is a first gulp of oxygen after drowning, but the shock of it for Keith is that first feeling of having your head held underwater.

“Hey,” Keith says, voice taut around the sudden lack of air in his chest. Lance, eyes flying open, visibly startles, already on his feet before he recognises Keith and relaxes.

“I didn’t think,” Lance says, pauses, licks his lips nervously. He stays stood where he is, and Keith doesn’t approach him: he thinks of the look in Lance’s eyes in the club, Keith backing him into a corner, and stays where he is. “You’re here. I didn’t think you’d -” He pauses, helplessly, looking the youngest Keith’s ever seen him.

“Of course I’m here,” Keith offers him, reassurance as much as an opportunity to pretend -

Keith doesn’t know what they’d pretend. Lance huffs under his breath and rubs his hand over his own face.

“You’re fine,” Lance says, but it’s a question, his eyes dark and searching.

“Scared if you come too close you’ll find out?”

Lance pulls a face and Keith waits for him to step into the light. When Lance does, Keith hisses out through his teeth without thinking.

“Don’t,” Lance warns him as he crosses the room towards Keith, “Don’t be weird about this.”

The first thing Keith notices is a graze that starts at his hairline and sweeps, stinging, across his eye, bruising blackening the edges. Keith’s hands itch at his sides. He isn’t sure if Lance wants to be touched.

“Nyma told me your brother posted bail,” Lance says. His lip is split. The shiny, half-healed tear of it catches the light when he talks.

“Nyma told _me_ you shouted at her.”

Lance’s mouth twists.

“Yeah,” he admits. “I did.”

When he glances away Keith snaps and cups Lance’s face in both hands, feels the surprise tremor through him. Keith pulls back and traces the graze backwards with his fingertips, slides his hand into Lance’s hair. He’s aware he’s shaking a little. If Lance notices, he doesn’t say a word. He feels swelling where Lance must have hit ground, just before Lance flinches at the pressure, but when Keith makes to move away, Lance’s hand flies to his wrist, holding Keith’s hand where it is. It’s only when Lance opens his eyes again Keith realises he’d closed them.

“I wanted to go back for you,” Lance murmurs, guilty, and Keith feels it split something in his heart.  

“Don’t be stupid,” Keith says, but Lance still looks miserable. Keith tilts Lance’s face until they’re looking each other dead in the eyes. “Nyma told me you didn’t even know what was happening until you were already in the car. You doubling back wouldn’t have helped, alright? I’d already gotten picked out.”

On the other side of the glass, they hear a muffled burst of laughter as a group pass under the studio window. Lance goes tense in Keith’s hold but doesn’t move away. Keith freezes in sync, fear familiar and locking his bones into place, but the laughter recedes and Keith runs his hand through Lance’s hair once, twice, clumsy, unsure which of them he’s trying to soothe.

“I still want to dance with you,” Keith says, and Lance frowns, then quickly smoothes his expression again, wincing as the grazed skin is pulled too taut.

“I thought you said last night was going to be the last time you’d -”

“I didn’t get to,” Keith points out. “We got interrupted.”

Lance scans his face, almost confused, before nodding and going to set up the record player.

“Did Nyma teach you to dance?” Keith finds himself asking. Lance, his hand on the needle of the record player, stops, laughs and drops the needle into place.

“Yep,” he says, and he’s grinning when he turns around. “We met in a dance hall my first month here. I don’t think this routine would have been good for us, though.” He saunters over, and Keith catches a flash of how Lance might’ve looked then, all eyes and faked confidence, coughing through cigarette smoke. His mouth goes dry. Lance takes Keith’s hands and puts them on his own hips, and Keith stares at him for a moment before remembering. Oh, he thinks, the dance. “I don’t think - this routine, this song isn’t - we wouldn’t have fit together like this.” He looks at Keith then and smiles again. “Don’t miss the cue.”

“I won’t miss the cue,” Keith says, feeling out of breath before they’ve even begun.

Their routine, for all its pains, is simple. Half the footwork is in believing you can’t fall. Half the choreography relies on trusting someone else without looking - that they’ll be there on the right beat, the right step, the right breath. It’s no wonder it’s something that’s had to be rehearsed for both of them. Keith wonders how he could have ever assumed this came naturally.

“We would’ve won, you know,” Lance says wistfully, afterwards, lying flat on his back on the floor of the studio with Keith at his side. When he takes hold of Keith’s hand, Keith lets him, stilling with the touch, his heart feeling somehow separate and outside of his body.

“I missed a step,” he points out, blood turned to static at Lance’s skin warm against his, the press of Lance’s clothed shoulder running hot through the cotton. He had done, caught on the way the dusk darkened Lance’s gaze into a hook, but Lance had carried them through it.

“We still would’ve won,” Lance insists.  

“I know,” Keith confesses. Lance is right. They would have.

Lance makes a vague, discontented humming sound, turns Keith’s face towards him, and kisses him hard on the mouth. They’re both still catching their breath. So Keith’s world hinges and resettles on breathing Lance in instead - and in, and in, until Lance laughs a little, as though the hunger of it startled him, as though he’s been startled by himself, and pulls away.  

“You’ll be here tomorrow?” Keith asks him. Looking at Lance the first time means you see a lot that makes sense; looking at him a second time means you see a lot that makes too much sense all at once. Keith sees Lance blink at him, hazy and wary, then rolls his eyes.

Keith remembers this later; the first step in running downhill, a descent that was only ever, according to the laws of gravity, going to gain momentum. Lance takes Keith's wrist, pushes back the sleeve, and kisses the marks, the soreness that's left. It stings. Keith isn't sure why he thought he could get away with Lance not noticing it. 

“I finish at nine this week,” Lance tells him. “So if you don’t mind waiting -”

 

*

 

The next week falls away from Keith like every single metaphor about sand and hourglasses and losing time. They only call it a cliche once they’re sick of hearing it. Keith is just lovesick. Drunk off evenings in the studio with Lance in his arms, he forgets to count the days down, to even notice them at all. After all, they all end in _y_ ; after all, they all end with Lance’s mouth on his, his hands under Lance’s shirt, their bodies falling into the pull of each other. Each time, time itself stretches out like a rubber band until one of them moves too fast or bites down too hard, until someone outside walks past with their voices too loud and it snaps the illusion that they are -

See, here Keith wants to think _somewhere else_ , but he isn’t sure there is a somewhere else for boys like them. He knows. He’d told Shiro as much, that night. This is federal level shit. Keith hasn’t asked what it was like where Lance is from. He’s gotten a good guess from the hesitant way Lance puts his hands on Keith’s back, palms folded to the shape of Keith’s shoulder blades over his shirt. Cuba is locked somewhere behind Lance’s eyes, falls out of his mouth in halting sentences like table scraps; _our apartment building was green, like that one place on Ocean Drive. I miss mamoncillos. The sea isn’t the same._ It’s in the names of Lance’s siblings, the six of them sounding to Keith like a lack of space. It’s in glimpses of Lance’s mental checklist - new shoes, new schoolbooks, new medicine for a brother’s bad chest - and how it translates into hours. For all Lance says he has two languages in his head, his mother tongue talks in time.

And then they’re in August, though it feels like if Keith slipped back ten minutes and ten minutes only he’d still be stood in the staff quarters that first night, inarticulate with longing, watching Lance laugh against a girl. For Keith, want has always been abstract. First defined in absence, stood as the only one at the Sadie Hawkins Dance without that current running under his skin. Then in the drop in his gut in the street, watching boys in dark jackets whoop around corners with hair like the grease of their bikes and eyes like the abyss. One step too close, and Keith would’ve just kept falling, no one to catch him at the end, so he stayed close to Shiro’s shadow at the crosswalk instead.

So he didn’t cut his hair and he bought a jacket like James Dean. He perfected the slouch he’d seen seven times in the cinema and called it all a warning, as he got ever closer to looking like those same boys, to looking like one of them. And now when he reaches out, there’s someone under him, and he’s not sure who’s supposed to catch who, afraid of making Lance’s body just a way to break his own fall.

 _The only thing we have to fear is fear itself:_ which sounds nice and means nothing, something only those with nothing irreplaceable say.

“I thought you said,” Lance gasps, pressing Keith into the floorboards, somehow managing to sound accusing with one hand curled gently around his wrist, “You said you didn’t know what you were doing.”

Keith kisses him, leaning up fast, and says, “I don’t.” Lance drops his head to rest against Keith’s collarbone and swears. Keith laughs at him, heart dizzy, uncomfortable against the floor but unwilling to move Lance. When he traces the metal of Lance’s belt, Lance shakes his head even as Keith feels the muscles in his stomach jump, sending a white-hot flare up through his own spine.

Keith is painfully aware of exactly where his body ends.

“Not here,” Keith guesses. He’s getting better at the guessing. If every reminder of where they are goes through Keith, lancing out any enjoyment, it’s only that he’s feeling the rebound from Lance.

Lance nods.

“Not here,” he says, and kisses Keith sharp like punctuation, like a puncture wound. “But that’s not a no.”

 

*

 

It’s a Saturday night. That’s what Keith remembers later, because he can see the lights on the horizon, blazing up the boardwalk. He keeps looking over at his shoulder towards them, in the midst of the delicate clink of polished cutlery. Whenever he looks back, Shiro is watching him carefully, even as he parries conversational starters from their tablemates.

 

“Have you got somewhere you’re going after this, Keith?” one of them asks.

“Yeah, actually,” he replies, ignoring Shiro’s startled glance, hastily suppressed. “I was asked along out.”

 

It’s not a lie. Keith feels like the note in his pocket is burning a hole through it, like it has been all this evening. Two long hours ago, he’d passed by Lance’s bar, alone and on his way back to his room to dress for dinner, trying to his best not to track Lance out of the corner of his eye and failing. When he’d heard Lance call, “Excuse me, sir. Room - are you room 294?” he’d stopped dead in the path, hadn’t been able to help it.

“Do you mean me?” Keith had asked, turning, barely a second to swallow down his heart. People were watching. People were _watching_ them. Lance, face painfully neutral, had said, “Yes. Are you - I’m sorry, but you’re Mr. Shirogane’s brother, aren’t you?”

The fact he’s pretending not to be able to tell,  when they’re the only two Asian patrons here the whole time Keith’s been staying, is what really sells it. Keith, despite the confusion, has to bite down a smile.

“Sure,” he replies, and Lance brightens. His smile isn’t the one he saves for Keith.

“Do you mind -” Lance leans over the bar, forcing Keith to come closer, circling like a baited shark. “I needed to pass on this receipt to him today - just so he can sign off on it - but I forgot. I’m not off duty until ten tonight, and I don’t know when he’ll next be by.”

It’s a little too much explanation, but by the look Lance gets from the other bar staff, they’re enjoying the schadenfreude of Lance breaking face and admitting a mistake too much to not buy it. The piece of paper Lance is holding between his fingers is folded. It’s even on the receipt paper.

“You forgot,” Keith echoes.

“I’m terribly sorry,” Lance deadpans. His eyes are dancing.

“Ten, you said?” Keith says, trying for nonchalance. He takes the paper without brushing against Lance’s fingers. He’s already so sure he’s giving it all away; he can’t afford to risk it. “I’ll try and get it back to you by then. He’s been busy.”

For a second, Lance looks like he’s going to crack and smile for real - his whole face wavers - but he turns away before it can happen

Keith can feel his heartbeat in his fingertips, bleeding through into the paper. He doesn’t dare open the note until he’s alone, and then he dresses for dinner, sealing everything in his chest away under neatly starched cotton. It takes him five tries to button his collar. He knows he should destroy it - the note, that is - but he’s not sure how to do it safely, so nobody else will ever see it, so he keeps it close by instead.

The dinner is only an hour. It’s an hour too long. Keith can feel the weight of Lance’s eyes where he stands, commandeered back into the restaurant, clearing plates and smiling close-lipped at something Gloria says. When he finally manages to excuse himself, he can feel Lance watch him leave. Lance’s shift finishes in twenty minutes. Keith times it so he only has to loiter a minute - breathless, changed into his jacket, wet hair falling into his eyes - before Lance rounds the corner out of the gate.

He doesn’t want to seem desperate.

“Funny seeing you here,” Keith drawls from the shadows, just to watch Lance jump out of his skin and swear. The moonlight drapes over them, gilding Lance’s ridiculous eyelashes to silver.

They walk in silence, pretending not to watch each other, pretending to keep their eyes solely on the road ahead, until the street lamps dwindle to nothing. Until Lance takes Keith’s hand, clammy in the half-darkness, and leads him through a mazework of rusting fences and tall grass. When Lance pushes a gate aside, it screeches on its hinges, so loud they both stop, waiting to be caught. Nothing moves. They keep going. An abandoned swimming pool, the blue tiles glowing eerie, rises out of the lawn. And they keep going, until it’s just them, in an overhang of overgrown trees, their leaves spilling over onto the patio.  

“This is a hotel,” Keith says.

“It’s been shut down as long as I’ve known it,” Lance explains. He’s nervous. Keith can tell by the shallow of his breathing. “The inside is all bolted shut, ‘cause, you know, and you can’t get into there, but - nobody else - it’s the only thing I could -”

He looks at Keith, pleading, all eyes shining like the moon. The night slips through the dapple of leaves, something small and secret, to play out on his face.

“Okay,” Keith replies, and kisses him.

 

*

 

_Get away tonight. I’ll meet you at the gate. I have an idea._

 

*

 

Afterwards, Lance looks at him, all languid, his body pressed against the grass. Keith lies next to him quietly, aware he’s being watched. He plucks a handful of the grass out, then drops it back down. He keeps his eyes to the line of Lance’s shoulder for a moment, the bare skin of it a piecemeal gasp under his undershirt, twisted awry by Keith’s hands. Then he looks up.

“Are you falling asleep?” Keith says, and Lance blinks and smiles. He shifts his arm, rests his head on it, and keeps staring at Keith.

“I’m not falling asleep.” His voice is warm. Keith feels it go through him, like a sugar high but slower. Right now, Keith can feel it when Lance breathes; when Lance reaches out, running his fingertips along Keith’s jaw, mouth set, their chests press together again, a kickstart to Keith’s slowing heart. Keith squirms under the touch, too light and almost ticklish, and knocks Lance’s hand aside.

“Quit it,” he says, not really meaning it.

“You quit it,” Lance replies, voice equally soft, “I’m trying to concentrate.”  

Keith gives him a whole minute of looking, his eyes travelling hot along Keith’s throat, down to the shadow in the hollow of his hipbone and back, before getting bored. He rolls back on top of Lance, holding Lance down with a hand to the centre of his chest, watching Lance strain up towards him and then still, settling back on his elbows.

“I’m not something to just look at,” Keith tells him, “I’m right here.”

He doesn’t know how to articulate it - it’s something sticking to his teeth, about the way Lance looks at him like he’s shoring up against the next day of being too wary to look at all, about how over breakfast this morning Keith heard the first talk of September and realised that it had to arrive.

“I’ve noticed,” Lance drawls meaningfully, grinning, and Keith rolls his eyes.

“No, I mean - I’m not going anywhere.” Lance raises his eyebrows. Keith sighs. “Not right now.” At that, Lance slowly nods. When Keith moves his hand from Lance’s chest, Lance leans up to kiss him, his hands moving to Keith’s hips, up to grip onto Keith’s arms, restless. Memorising. A little clumsy. Steadier than before.

“Had you -” Keith pulls back to ask, “You hadn’t - before -”

“No,” Lance replies, laughing, “What? No. With who? No.”

“Gloria Hearst,” Keith suggests, and laughs wildly at the look on Lance’s face. “Darla Huntingdon -” Lance grabs for him, trying to cover his mouth, but Keith snatches for Lance’s wrists, holding his hands out of the way. “Cindy Gilmore - there’s girls out by the beaches - ”

The look of outrage on Lance’s face is priceless. Keith pitches forward, body shaking against Lance’s. He lets go of Lance’s wrists at the last minute, and Lance curls one hand around the back of Keith’s neck.

“Since when did you notice girls?” Lance says, voice oddly high-pitched and half-muffled against Keith’s hair. He curls his fingers into Keith’s hair, hesitant, and Keith makes a pleased noise.

“Since never,” he murmurs against Lance’s neck, places a kiss against the sweat-tacky skin. Lance tenses, then lets out a slow breath. “You kiss better than them.”

“How would you even know?” Lance leans back to look at him, frowning.

“Scared I’ve gotten to more of them than you have?” Keith grins, and Lance swats him. “I just know, alright?” He hooks a finger under the neckline of Lance’s undershirt, tangles his hand in the chain around Lance’s neck. He’s seen the faint glint of it before, the clasp at the nape of Lance’s neck in the club, but had been too distracted by the skin to take much notice of the metal.

“You’re so -” Lance rolls his eyes, letting go of Keith to smooth out the chain. “You’ll break it.”

“It’s important,” Keith surmises. He glances over the crucifix hanging from the chain, the medallion the size of a fingernail, then follows his eyes with his hands. Lance shrugs. Keith watches the way muscle shifts when he does and - it’s like thinking an itch will go away only to find it’s an ache, something lower and older, something too deep to get out.

“Sort of,” which means _yes._ “My grandmother gave it to me.” He half sits up, Keith’s weight still on top of him, and finds the medallion without looking. It’s cheaper metal to the silver, a kind of pale green enamel set in tin. It’s faintly oxidised, the tarnishing visible even in the darkness. Keith thinks _cheap_ without meaning to. He can tell from the twist in Lance’s mouth that Lance has seen it, so he leans down to kiss it out of their mouths, like washing the taste out.

“It’s St. Christopher,” Lance murmurs, after some time. “Patron saint of travellers.” He sighs, like something being let go. Punctuation, a puncture wound. Then he twists the medallion to show the design on the underside. “Our Lady of Charity.” He fusses with it a moment before dropping it again and dropping his head back against the grass in turn.

“You have to say if you’re trying to tell me something,” Keith tells him. Lance turns his head to the side and mutters something, low. Keith jabs him in the ribs, has the satisfaction of feeling Lance react underneath him, his body moving below Keith’s as he yelps.

“She gave it to me before we left,” Lance says, louder now. “She’s still there.”

“In Cuba?” Lance nods, jaw set. “And you’re here,” Keith can’t help but say. Lance nods again.

Keith doesn’t ask if Lance will ever go back. He knows it would be taking the boy underneath him and flaying another unwanted truth out. He doesn’t ask if Lance misses it, but Lance looks up at him, steady, and says, “It was the middle of the night. When we went. Clean break.”

Of course, that means something was still broken in the escape. Keith watches him, silent, and Lance adds, “They’ve never said. I think it was because of me. Because of - but they’ve never said.”

Keith brushes Lance’s hair back from his forehead.

“Because of?”

Lance reaches up and traces the shape of Keith’s collarbone.

“This,” he says.

 _Oh,_ Keith thinks. It all falls into place at once, the stunning clarity of it. Lance and his family. Lance and his guilt. Lance and his hours and his time measured out like currency and the hesitant reach towards what he wants -

“You’re heavy,” Lance interrupts Keith’s train of thought, and rolls them both onto their sides. “Stop trying to fix this.”

“I’m not,” Keith protests, trying to figure out how to fix this.

“Stop looking for something to fix. You can’t.” Lance looks like he regrets ever saying anything. Keith balls the hem of Lance’s undershirt into his fist and says, “If you hadn’t been here, I think I would have read a lot more this summer.”

It’s not what he meant to say. He meant to say _if you hadn’t been here, I wouldn’t be this - nothing would have changed. You’re the best worst catalyst I’ve ever met._ Before he can apologise for it, or take it back, Lance starts laughing.

“Stop talking,” Lance implores. “You’re so bad at it.”

“Says you!”

“I would know!”

Lance is glaring at him, like nothing’s happened, only it’s somehow better for knowing it has. Keith, buoyant, laughs back, into his mouth.

 

*

 

“I’ll walk you back,” Lance says softly, pulling away, his hand still on the back of Keith’s head in the last corner of shadow before they properly hit the grounds. The risk of it, of Lance’s mouth, so close to where five hundred guests sleep - it’s fear and gasoline both. The grass is dew-damp, and Keith silently hands over Lance’s jacket with a soft wrenching feeling in his stomach. Lance half-smiles as he takes it back, squeezes Keith’s fingers in his own, and then drops his hand as they pass through the hotel’s back gate. It’s cold at night. Keith breathes it in: honeysuckle, the faint heat from Lance’s body when their shoulders brush, sweat drying on the back of his neck. Lance won’t touch him now they’re inside the grounds, not without a lock in the door somewhere, but when Keith turns to look at his profile Lance catches him and smiles softly, eyes alight, and Keith holds onto that. Lance walks ahead, knowing the hotel by heart, even in the dark, so he rounds the corner first. He stops dead very suddenly. Keith nearly walks into him. Keith rears back, annoyed, and leans around an unmoving Lance to see what’s -

“Shit,” Keith mumbles. The window light of Keith’s room is on, blazing across the lawn. The door is open. Shiro is sat in the doorway, reading a book, cigarette hanging from his mouth. He looks up, puts the book down, taps out the cigarette on a hotel saucer. There’s several stubs already on the plate.

“Evening,” he says, his mouth a flat line. “Well, morning.”  

Keith had always carried around the concept of virginity like something to lose, like it was something that might be noticed in the way he moved. Inexperience felt like discomfort, to be discarded at the first opportunity. Now, he prays it’s invisible. Looking at Lance out of the corner of his eye, he’s reminded that prayers are often made with the hope of the impossible. Lance is still in his undershirt, his shirt left unbuttoned, the crucifix looped around his neck and glinting off the wreck of his hair, a tangle of cowlicks that had been impossible for Keith to smooth back down. There’s a bruise on his bare collarbone. Keith, entirely dressed but barefoot, the laces of his boots knotted around his left hand, can imagine the strange wild light in his eyes - he’d caught a glimpse of himself in a darkened window as they’d passed. When Shiro raises his eyebrows, he flushes, as though how he can still feel Lance’s hands on him will show up in his face like they feel inked on his skin, a tracery of invisible handprints.

“It’s four in the morning,” Shiro says quietly.

“Sorry, sir,” Lance replies immediately, and Keith casts Shiro a dark look.

“I told you I’d be out with a friend.”

Shiro hums consideringly under his breath, and takes another drag of his cigarette. He’s rereading Ray Bradbury. It was Mom’s copy. The spine is near bent in half.

“You should get to bed,” Shiro tells Lance, after a long and awful moment where Shiro lets his eyes drop and rise again, taking Lance in. Keith feels a prickling upsurge of anger when Lance drops his eyes to the ground in turn, a wary look Keith’s seen from mornings on the lawn, watching Iverson berate Lance over a lack of ice. “I’m sure you have an early start.”

“Yeah - I mean, yes, sir,” Lance stammers.

“You don’t have to call him sir,” Keith snaps, “He’s just my brother.”  

Very steadily, Lance says, “I know."

There’s another silence. Shiro slowly stubs out the cigarette, picks up the plate, and gets to his feet. He leaves the book where it is.

“Well, goodnight, Mr. McClain,” Shiro says. “Keith, it’s late.”

His voice brooks no argument.

“Give me a second,” Keith hisses. Shiro shrugs and walks inside noiselessly, leaving the door open like an accusation. The minute he’s gone, Keith turns to Lance, who looks, unsurprisingly, shaken. He takes in a deep breath, looking at his feet still, before looking at Keith, half-shadowed and unreachable in the dark.  

“Lance,” he says quickly, desperately, “Lance, I’m -”

“Keith, it’s fine,” Lance says. “It’s - it’s really fine.”

“He won’t tell anyone. I won’t let him,” Keith barters, trying to reel Lance back in, feeling thrown ashore. He can’t understand how this works - how you can feel so close to someone, and then for them to become so distant, when -

“He already knew, didn’t he?” Lance says, and Keith nods mutely, biting his lip.

“He came to get me after the raid, you know that,” he explains, and Lance closes his eyes briefly. “But - yeah. He got it out of me.”

“Fucking hell,” Lance mutters. “Yeah. That’d do it.”

“Lance, he won’t say anything,” Keith repeats himself. Lance looks down at him, and smiles, something very small, and Keith opens his mouth. Lance shakes his head, very slightly, and reaches out, tucks some of Keith’s hair behind his ear. It’s the most Lance has ever touched him in this much open space.

“Don’t look like that, beautiful,” Lance whispers. “I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah?”

“Tomorrow?”

“I promise.”  

Keith watches his retreating back through the dark for a long time, until he rounds the first corner on his long walk back to the staff quarters, the pale of his shirt striking out across the lawn at him like surrender. Keith closes his eyes, takes a breath, and compacts all of it - the whole last few hours - back somewhere in his chest. Then he storms into the room, slamming the door behind him and dropping his boots in a heap.

“You left Mom’s book outside,” he snarls at Shiro, and makes for the bathroom. Shiro cuts in his way.

“Keith,” he says, “We need to talk.”

“I need a fucking shower,” he retorts, making eye contact and waiting for the moment Shiro looks away. He doesn’t. He says, “It can wait.”

“What, you and it both? Nice trick. You should be a chaperone for some middle-schoolers or something.”

“Keith, that’s not fair -”

“Why would you talk to him like that?” He doesn’t register the pain in his voice until it’s out and Shiro’s already flinched.

“Keith, can we just -”

“You don’t,” Keith stumbles over the words, “You can’t talk - you know Dad hated it when people treated people like shit, and he’s not yours to - to order about - he’s -” _He’s mine, he’s mine, he’s mine, I’ve heard his heartbeat, you have no -_ “You’ve no fucking right, you don’t understand -”

“You’ve been out all night!” Shiro hisses. “I don’t know this guy, Keith!”

“Oh, yeah, ‘cause you’re clearly so good at introducing yourself.”   

“Keith, it’s dangerous,” Shiro snaps, “I don’t expect you to understand. There are laws, you can’t just -”

“So you can have Allura? There’s been laws about that, sure, but, yeah, they didn’t matter, did they? You can just -” The minute he says it, he knows he’s gone right over the line. Shiro’s face flashes with real anger, the bone-deep kind he’s buried down over the years. His jaw works for a second, and then he grits out, “I can’t just. We can’t just. Keith, why do you think I’m saying this?”

“You’re not Mom and Dad,” Keith shouts, “They’re not here anymore, you’re not them! I’m eighteen! I’m eighteen and I can - ”

“Keith, keep your voice down, it’s four in the -”

“So you’re ashamed? Is that it?”

“No. No! That’s not it! I thought you might be  - I didn’t know if something had happened, or - Keith, I’ve met guys like him that were real assholes, and I can’t -”

“You haven’t met him,” Keith’s fury is incalculable. It’s gone past mathematics. “You haven’t tried to meet him. You never asked me about him, you never -”

“He left you!” Shiro finally yells back. Keith jumps on instinct. Shiro rarely shouts, which makes it all the more unnerving when he gets mad enough to.  “Alright? He left you, unless you forgot, and you know what? I don’t know where I fucked up but Keith, you deserve better than someone who fucks off the minute -”

“He didn’t. He tried to go back for me, he said -”

“Oh, I’m sure he said. I’m _sure_ he said -”

“Finish that sentence and I’m walking out of here, Shiro.”

There’s a long silence. Shiro watches Keith, and Keith watches Shiro. Shiro stalks over to his coat pocket and grabs out another packet of cigarettes. Keith watches him light up in silence. Shiro breathes in, breathes out.

“So that’s it, then,” Keith says quietly. Shiro shrugs. “At what point am I going to become real to you, Takashi?”

“You are real to me,” Shiro mutters, going for the ashtray, the heavy crystal of it in his hand. “Keith, you can’t - I had no idea what I was supposed to say to get you out of there at the station. I didn’t know what they’d done. I didn’t know if I was gonna get you back.”

“That’s what it’s been like for me every time you leave,” Keith says, “Every time I hear there’s another riot on campus. I don’t lock you in the apartment.”

 _It’s just me and Shiro,_ Keith had told Lance after one of their rehearsals, the earliest ones, where Keith had watched Lance’s mouth and thought _if I kiss him, if I do it just once, maybe it’ll burn the whole thing out of me._

_Just the two of you?_

_Yeah. It’s fine. We have each other._

Right now, Shiro sits down on the end of his bed, puts the ashtray at his feet, and leans his head on his arm. It’s achingly silent.

“Keith,” Shiro says softly. “Tell me - I’m doing something wrong again, aren’t I? Just - I don’t know, tell me -”

“Let me have him,” Keith says, and Shiro sits up to look at him, face falling. He looks - stricken, somehow.  

“Keith.”

“Let me have him,” Keith says again, gathering momentum, dragging himself along by the hook in his own chest. His voice cracks through the middle. “Shiro, I -” _I think I’m in love with him. I think I’m in love with him. No, I don’t think. I don’t think._ “Shiro -” _Sometimes he looks at me and it’s like he’s restructured gravity. Tonight, I put my hands on his chest and I put my hands on his body and I’m already watching the hours, I’m already starving again._ “Shiro, I don’t -” _You’ve never seen him past the gate. You’ve never seen him with the sun in his eyes._ “He makes me happy. He makes me so happy, and it’s _not fair_.”

“Hey, hey,” Shiro walks over to him and hugs him, smelling like laundry and Keith’s whole childhood. “Hey, don’t - it’s not. You’re right. It’s not.”

 

They stay stood like that for a long time.

 

*

 

Hearst and his wife Gloria are the kind of people that love to be seen with Shiro and Keith at dinner; it makes them look interesting. The eldest son of a lawyer, Shiro - with his internships, his careful mention of future hopes, his best polite smile with no hint of teeth - Shiro's a decent young man.  
  
"Thank you," Shiro says, when Hearst says exactly that. Keith sits at the table and does not smile.

He thinks about telling them his father gave out free legal advice to men picked up by McCarthy, that his mother taught the other women in their street how to sing when they marched. Both are true, but Shiro - who came out of the camps with a perfect American smile - kicks Keith under the table without a singular shift in his expression. Keith kicks back, leans forward on one arm, and looks for Lance.

"So are you going to go into the law too, young man?" Hearst asks.  
  
"No," Keith replies shortly. He can't see Lance anywhere. His stomach swoops. The closest he got was at breakfast when he saw Iverson sniping at Lance to fix his cuffs midway through an order of mimosas. Lance hadn’t even looked his way.  He'd wanted to go over in front of them all, but Shiro's guarded stare had kept him locked miserably to his seat.

"Looking for someone?" Gloria asks Keith, toying boredly with her pearls. She can't be that much older than Shiro.

"Not really," he says very carefully, and she raises an eyebrow and says, "Doesn't a nice boy like you have any friends here, honey?"

Keith grits his teeth.  
  
"Yes," Hearst says, "There's plenty of young folks about."  
  
"Keith likes to read," Shiro says smoothly, catching Keith's eye.

"A college man like your brother! I see!'

"I don't go to college."

There's a brief lull in conversation as the Hearsts absorb this. Keith savagely cuts into a tomato.

"Another drink, perhaps...?" Hearst nods, seemingly to himself, leans back in his seat and clicks his fingers impatiently. "Service! Can I get some -"

Keith barely has a moment to feel properly stricken before he hears "Yes, sir. What can I do for you?"  
  
Shiro's social mask must be taking a toll. He keeps peaceably at his own starter and doesn't even frown at Lance, stood opposite to Keith. Lance looks tired, Keith thinks, wondering if Lance slept at all after he left, and he must have borrowed a clean shirt and jacket. Keith thinks of the stains splayed across the cotton, the smear of them across his shoulders, and how they’d gotten there; the way Lance had thrown his head back, gasping, eyes half-open like he couldn’t bear to close them. Right now, Lance keeps his eyes down to the ground. Immobile like this, he looks like a perfect copy of someone Keith might have known once, but not now.

"Ah, Lance! There you are. Have you met Takashi Shirogane and his brother -"  
  
Hearst has already forgotten his name. Unsurprising. "Keith Kogane," Keith says quietly to his plate.

"Different surname, honey?" Gloria purses her lips.  
  
"Adopted," Keith explains, his breath staccato.

"I think Mr. Shirogane has been to the bar once or twice during his visit," Lance replies.

"We were just telling Keith here there were lots of you young lot around."

"Apparently, he reads," Gloria says, leaning forward as though imparting a secret, her voice softening as though to ensure Lance leans closer to hear her. Lance smiles tightly.

"What can I get for you all today?" he asks.

"Oh, darling," Gloria says. She puts one glittering white hand on Lance's arm. "Do you know, I'm getting one of my headaches. It must be the heat."  
  
It was raining this morning, but Keith can't find his voice to point that out. He'd watched silently from the window of their room as Shiro pretended not to watch him, as waiters ran out black - jacketed to secure the garden umbrellas and under water in the shower, Keith had looked at his bare skin and thought _it's as though nothing happened now._

"You know I can fix that for you, Mrs. Hearst," Lance says, smiling like it's easy. Keith manages a direct look at them. Lance won't look at him, but Keith can feel their awareness of each other all the same. It makes his skin itch. No, not an itch to scratch, but something open. Something infected.

His whole body _aches._  
  
"Would you? What a darling. Ice, extra tonic."  
  
"The usual."  
  
"The usual."

Hearst rolls off his order, which sounds unnecessarily complex, but Lance merely nods.

"What about you, Takashi?" he asks.

"Not today."

Shiro's smile is brittle and aimed directly at Lance. Lance immediately drops his eyes back to the floor.

"And you, Keith?" Hearst asks. "Anything you'd like?"

Keith can't help but think about Lance, endlessly mapping out Keith's tells, his forehead against the hollow of Keith's throat and his voice soft against his chest, burial without burial: _tell me what to do._ Keith opens his mouth to find Shiro's beaten him to it. 

"Keith's eighteen," Shiro informs the table. "So, no." 

"Oh, my," Gloria says, sounding delighted. "I would've said you were as old as Lance here. You must be an old soul." She looks at Shiro. "Surely one couldn't hurt, though?"

"Sorry, ma'am," Shiro says; at _ma'am_ her eyes flash. "Keith’s younger than he looks."

"Well," she says reluctantly, "I suppose that's all. D'you remember all that, Lance? I don't know how you can."

Her hand is, astoundingly, still on his arm. His movement away is so fluid it could hardly be parsed as rejection.

"I've practised," he says, "I'll be right back."

Keith watches him cut away through the crowd, familiarity made into grace. He feels laid bare without moorings.  
  
"He works so hard, doesn't he," Gloria sighs. Lance makes it halfway down the aisle before being called over to clear a table. "Oh, Lord. We'll never get him back now."

"He'll remember," Hearst reassures her. Keith takes several slow breaths.

"Where's he from again, Hearst?"

Next to Keith, Shiro minutely tenses.

"I think he said Cuba, doll. There's a lot of them in Miami these days, thanks to that blasted revolution.” Hearst sighs. “If they're going to fight," he adds, "I've nothing against that, but I'd rather they kept it between themselves, you see?"

"I see," Shiro says, in a voice that says he does, but that perhaps he sees something different.

"Hearst, don't be mean," Gloria chides. "After all, his English is beautiful."

"Can I be excused," Keith says, already standing up. His chair screeches along the patio. He looks past the Hearsts, directly at Shiro. He knows Shiro won't risk making a scene here right now, and there's a certain coded sympathy in Shiro's eyes when he goes, "Go ahead." Keith leaves Shiro to figure out a suitable excuse to the Hearsts, heading blindly down the middle aisle, his heart going fast but wrong.

He's nearly in the clear when one of the service staff cut in front of him from the side, half-turned, balancing a tray of empty glasses.

"I'm sor --"

It's Lance. His lips part, his body still in motion, the two of them headed for a collision: the kind where something gets broken. Keith dodges clear, but his hip grazes against Lance's beneath his jacket. The glasses jostle, on the cusp of spilling, and they'd been so close to getting it right - so Keith grabs hold of Lance's wrist and steadies it. The glasses stay put. Lance's eyes are very wide, and the world around them narrows.

 _Good,_ Keith thinks a little savagely, _Good. Look at me._

It lasts a second too long, and then there's someone laughing nearby, and that does break it. Keith pulls away first to save Lance from having to, but not before a subtle tightening of his grip. Catch and release. Lance's breath catches in echo. Keith swallows, ducks his head, and heads to his room.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Our Lady of Charity is the [Marian of Cuba.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Lady_of_Charity)
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> For those curious about the Japanese American internment, [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans) and [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shikata_ga_nai) were helpful starting points for me in beginning to research it. 
> 
> I'm likely to extend this fic by a chapter (so, to five chapters), but I'll see how it goes and update the fic to reflect that once I've decided. Sorry for the long delay in updating - I've sat my finals, graduated, moved across the country and had a family bereavement, all in the last few months.


	4. Chapter 4

**March, 1963**

 

Keith makes his way up the stairs as carefully as he'd left. Every step is painstaking. He manoeuvres around the creaks in the floorboards like the dancer he isn't and like the boy he is - that is to say, wary.

Of course, he still gets caught out anyway. He hears the murmuring behind Shiro's closed door stop and has a moment of silent, sheer panic on the landing before the door opens and Keith has to face him. Red-faced, he tells himself firmly, is not the same as red-handed, even as the hook of Shiro's expression turns the back of his neck hot and itchy with guilt.

"Busy night," Shiro says quietly, taking Keith in. The bleeding scrape taken out of Keith at the knee, the boots dulled of all their shine by dirt, the split lip that sings out like a high bell when Keith talks.

His tone is neutral, but Keith bristles all the same.    
  
"I made it back before curfew," he replies, all defiance. As if to prove it, the grandfather clock in the hallway chimes the hour right then.

"You did," Shiro sounds mildly helpless. He glances behind him to his closed bedroom door and then back to Keith, torn.

Keith can't blame him. Allura must be easier, even iron-eyed and annoyed, than Keith these days, longing a second skin. He doesn't know what for, only the hum of it stretches out along the day, incessant, growing.

The longing leads him out at night, cycling laps around the city, picking up speed, braking later and later on the turns, until all the pale teeth of the townhouses meld into a continuous beam of light, a projection beam like out of the picture house double-bills Keith loses aimless Saturdays in. He cycles so fast and so long, one boy on a bicycle, he feels himself become something close to  _ beyond. _ And beyond is nearly good as above: above long drives with girls where they're all lipstick and expectations in the backseat. Above Sadie Hawkins dances and rumours about boys who hang out behind the bleachers, lit cigarettes flaring in their eyes, above that one teacher who disappeared overnight, slipped out-of-state, after they found another man naked in his house.

"You shouldn't keep her waiting," he says, and Shiro rolls his eyes and says, "It wouldn't be the first time." 

It's meant to sound reassuring, Keith knows. He just nods and turns to head up the next flight of stairs, to his bedroom, where he can put a door between himself, all his secrets, and Shiro's bleeding heart eyes.

Shiro definitely took those right out of Mom's playbook: the kind of look that wanted to understand so badly you were halfway to spilling your guts down your shirt front before you even clocked what was happening.

"Keith," Shiro calls. Keith, who's made it to the third step, wavers and turns around. "You dropped this on your way out earlier."

He's holding the badge upturned in his palm, dark against it like a black spot, some kind of pirate curse. It meant the wearer was about to die.  Keith remembers reading about that sort of thing, but right now he stares at the badge in his brother's hand and his whole life is sticking to his teeth.

“You know,” Shiro says, “If you ever need to talk about anything -” The badge’s enamel shimmers faintly, beetle-glitter, blatant.  _ Immoral Minority Member.  _ Shiro looks at Keith’s face, shrugs and swallows. 

“It’s okay,” Keith says, “It’s not important,” which is a lie, and they both know it. 

“You’re my brother,” Shiro tells him, which isn’t a reply but somehow is, and they both know that, too. 

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Keith snaps. “Not yet. I don’t know - I don’t know how to.” 

“Then you don’t have to,” Shiro says simply. “I’m just saying I’m here. I’ve no plans to go anywhere else anytime soon. Okay?”    

Shiro leans forward, takes Keith’s clenched hand, and uncurls his fingers. Places the badge square in the centre of Keith’s palm; an echo, a transmission. His eyes are the sort of understanding it’s easy to fall into. 

“Okay,” Keith replies. 

 

**1965**

 

It's dusk. Keith can taste the aftertaste of the day dry in his mouth. He sits out by the terrace bar, and busies himself with another book whilst Shiro's eyes hang heavy on him. Less than a day ago, Keith was burning up, anticipation gasoline, struck off Lance's smile and his own bones. He pretends not to look at his brother, or where Lance stands by a table with Gloria and her clique, mixing martinis sprinkled with preserved flowers, salt and pepper into vodka, drinks with long names like peep show films. Lance flips the bottle of vodka in the air, catches it - all clean arc of arm and professional confidence - and pours.

Keith notices that Shiro is watching him. Shiro doesn't frown, but the careful blankness of his face is almost worse. All of Shiro's judgement has always been in his silence. Keith holds the gaze and shuts his book. Right now, he can't read past the second paragraph. He keeps repeating himself, stuck in some kind of loop. He's trapped back in between the startled flash of Lance's eyes, deer-shocked, and the way he looked walking away across the lawn early this morning, shirt ruined by them both.

Shiro clears his throat. Keith puts the book down on the table, combative, and folds his arms.    
  
"I was thinking -"    
  
"Uh huh," Keith says.

"This December, we should go away for the holiday. If you want."    
  
The suggestion shouldn't stick in Keith's chest like it does. December was inevitable, but it was barely even September yet.   
  
"Sure," Keith replies.

"Just sure?"    
  
"Yeah, sure. I said that."

"You don't want to," Shiro surmises, leaning back in his seat. From Gloria's table, there's a shriek of laughter. Keith holds himself still until the urge to look passes.

"I didn't say that, did I?" Keith snaps, annoyed. "Just - why do we have to talk about that now? Why can't we just -"

_ Why can't I just have August? Why can't you just let me finish reading? Why can't you just let me have - _

He glares, inarticulate, waiting for Shiro to translate it. Even if he's growing unreliable, distant across consonants, Shiro's always been able to pick most of Keith's silence apart into something. Shiro shrugs, leans back. 

“Think about it,” he tells Keith. 

When he heads back to the room for his nightly phone call to Allura, it’s with a glance Keith swallows down and sends back sharper. Keith is under the situational supervision of thirty other guests, Lance’s supervisor barking orders by the bar, and two other bartenders. Keith’s hardly going to push Lance down into the grass and stain a second shirt of his the moment Shiro turns his back. 

“See you later, Shiro,” Keith says pointedly. Shiro hovers a beat too long. Keith raises his eyes from his book to roll his eyes at him; Shiro frowns; Keith opens his mouth and lets, “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” fall out of his mouth, the syllables dripping spite. 

“Don’t do anything,” Shiro warns out loud instead of just with his eyes. 

“I’m on my best behaviour,” Keith mutters, making a show of ignoring Shiro for his book. He’d planned to be done with this one sooner, back in July even, but then Lance had walked past and Keith had remembered the library renewal policies. Told himself some things were worth the fine.

The second Shiro drops out of Keith’s view, Keith drops the book, the act, and any pretence he’s not watching Lance. Not that he’s catching more than glances. Not catching, sneaking. Something piecemeal, table scraps of Lance’s shoulders and the low blur of his voice, familiar even from a distance. When you’re hungry though, you’ll take anything and turn it into a feast. Once or twice since lunch, he’s looked up to see Lance staring at him where Keith sprawled on the lawn - Lance’s eyes heavy on the fall of Keith’s hands, a visible slip of collarbone, Keith’s mouth. The second Lance saw him looking back, he’d turn his face away, his eyes down, busy himself with another Bloody Mary. It’s not fair, Keith thinks with a steadily familiar flare of anger, one that’s made its home low in his stomach. None of it is fair. The more he gets of Lance, the less it seems. That’s the other problem with being hungry, of course: once you start, you don’t know how to stop. 

Keith daren’t go too close to the bar - two days in a row is asking for trouble. But Lance has been back and forth between the bar and the far side of the terrace where Gloria is holding court so often in the last hour, Keith’s surprised Lance’s footsteps haven’t worn a path into the flagstones. It’s not  _ fair.   _

He scowls down at the table, eyes trying to burn holes through his book. 

“Excuse me, sir?”

He looks up so fast he nearly snaps his own neck backwards. Ricochet, whiplash: call it what you want. Keith doesn’t care, what it is or how it looks, his heart thudding halfway out of his chest. He knows that voice. Even wrapped up in politely distant words, it feels terrifyingly intimate. The  _ sir _ is mocking, but only if you know Lance - the way he’s smiling with his eyes, stood above Keith with a tray - and Keith swallows down around the way it makes him want to smile back, around the ache until it settles back down. Keith leans back, bathed in the fall of Lance’s shadow, and says, “Yes. Sorry. Is there something you want?” 

Lance grins wider, for a fraction of a second, all teeth like a secret. 

“Your order,” Lance replies.

He takes one of the drinks from the tray, negotiating around the empty glasses and other orders he’s carrying, and places it down on the table. He does it very carefully, like he’s been taught to do it without making a sound. Keith doesn’t try and take it. He doesn’t trust his hands to be steady enough. He stares at the condensation slipping down outside the drink’s glass, the faint imprint of Lance’s fingers, and looks back at Lance to find him watching Keith. His eyes are slow and dark in watching, despite the blue. The weight of his gaze tugs Keith under. In between every blink, he’s back in the grounds of an abandoned hotel. They’re safe in the quiet behind Keith’s eyes, them and the eerie alien glow of empty blue tile visible every time he turned his head away to gasp. Lance’s breath hot against his neck when he laughed, the sound all nerves and muffled against Keith’s skin. The slide of lips there sending something quickfire through Keith’s blood.  

Keith hadn’t ordered anything. He never does, not from the terrace. They both know that. What is Lance doing? 

“If I made a mistake,” Lance says quietly, “We can always take it back. After all, maybe your brother would rather -”

Oh, Keith thinks. He’s not talking about the drink. Lance’s shift ends late tonight. Tomorrow is his day off. He’s probably worried about the absence stretching out too far, it looking telling. Like he’s avoiding Keith, even though he’s asking if it’s going to be the other way around -

Keith snatches the drink up and downs the whole thing, barely letting the taste of it linger. It’s the same sweet tea Keith has been making headway through every day this summer. He didn’t think Lance had noticed. Maybe the taste stayed in Keith’s mouth.

He slams the glass down, making noise where Lance hadn’t. 

“My brother isn’t my keeper,” Keith replies. 

The look of relief on Lance’s face stays for a whole beat before he smiles again. Lance was worried about Keith feeling ignored. Lance was worried about not catching Keith before his day off. Lance was worried about Keith. It shouldn’t make Keith feel wildly, brutally happy the way it does, but it does all the same. Lance hovering like this - all eyes, all risk - is ridiculous and means something ridiculous. That Lance feels equally bruised by the way they fit together, simultaneously seamless and out of place. That he feels the same way.  

Keith’s shaking, he notices, when he holds out the glass. He waits for Lance to take it. It should make him feel powerful. He’s sure that how it looks - a bored rich kid dragged to Florida for the summer, ordering around a boy paid not to leave. But Keith’s always been aware just because Lance can’t walk away from him in public, doesn’t mean Keith can’t lose him anyway. 

The word he’s looking for is  _ desperation.  _

“Lance!” Gloria calls for him over the divide of the tables. The pitch of her voice is shattering. “Can I borrow you for a second, darling?”

Lance tenses. Keith resists the urge to grind his teeth together. Lance catches his eye, and there’s a shared silence again for a moment, a shared space out in the open despite everything. Then Lance squares his shoulders and turns back, grabbing Keith’s empty glass on automatic as he goes.   

“Anything I can help you with?” he asks her. Keith can see the turn of his head as Lance looks between Gloria and the ever-present Darla. He’s trying his best to ignore Cindy Gilmore, but given she’s giggling behind her hand, Keith suspects Lance might be acting.  

“We forgot to tip you!” Cindy manages brightly. 

Keith can’t see Lance’s expression when he says, “You’re too kind, Mrs. Hearst. Really, it’s not expected.” What he does see, however, when Gloria leans forward and drops a ten dollar bill into Lance’s jacket pocket, is a faint metal glint, partially hidden by the green of the note and the lacquer of her grasp.  

Keith knows that particular metal well. The hotel room key in his pocket is made of exactly the same. 

It’s such a blatant ploy. It’s the sort of thing they make jokes about in the fucking pictures, the sort of thing they turn into a melodrama plot in some ongoing serial, the sort of thing you see in movie magazines: bright young things propping up the rich in Hollywood, always so grateful for the opportunity. And the thing is, Keith’s not stupid, and he doesn’t own Lance. Keith is eighteen years old, the sky is blue, and Lance can’t lose his job: these are all inescapable facts. These are the fabric of the world they live in. That right now, it feels like that selfsame fabric is smothering them both is irrelevant. He watches Lance move to take the tray back to the terrace. Keith realises he’s staring, but he can’t manage to wrench himself back to his book, the book he meant to read back in July, before Lance fucked all his plans to hell. 

It’s not fair. Who said anything in the rules about playing fair? Keith’s furious anyway. There’s knowing you live in a rigged game, and there’s actually being six bells in, watching the tally rack up against you, knowing you have to stand up in your corner, over and over, only to take another hit. 

He can feel his own key, the shadow of it hot in his jeans pocket, pressed against his thigh as Lance passes. He’s not the only one watching. Cindy looks a bizarre mixture of delighted and strangulated jealousy, and all the other patrons are politely pretending to be experiencing some kind of temporary vision loss. 

“Called it,” Keith hears one of the glass collectors murmur to a waiter, their black jackets pristine, crisp, shining like oil on water. 

Lance, only two tables over from Keith now, turns and looks directly at the two of them for a moment. The waiter gives in to a wince. Lance takes a breath.

“Go take this back,” Keith hears him snap, under that same breath, and hands the glass collector the tray. The glass collector takes it on automatic, hands reaching out. Lance takes another breath, staccato, as though steadying himself. “Don’t make me clean up after you. It’s not my job.”  

He turns on his heel and heads back towards Gloria’s table. Keith barely sees him pass. It’s a blur of movement, all momentum, like Lance is afraid to stop and think it through properly. He stops by Gloria’s seat. His hand is clenched into a fist by his side, arm held tight against the side of his body. 

“Don’t worry, Lance. I don’t need you right now,” she says. “We’ll call if -”

“Excuse me, ma’am,” Lance cuts across her. His smile is perfect: brilliantine, brittle. “I’m so sorry to interrupt, but I couldn’t help notice you dropped something important.”

He opens his hand and gently, with a habitual carefulness - a habit, Keith realises, that is somehow violent - places Gloria’s hotel room key on the table in front of her. It’s blatant against the pale of the tablecloth, the black enamel of the keychain an inverse of glowing. 

There’s a moment that Keith can’t believe exactly what he’s seeing. The other patrons, craning their own necks, seem to blink in unison. Lance seems to be holding his breath. He watches the shock tremble and sink below Gloria’s face, to the evident enjoyment of her tablemates with a polite expression, the blandness of it cutting. 

“Of course,” he adds hurriedly, watching Gloria open her mouth, “I wouldn’t want to shortchange you, ma’am.” 

He takes the ten dollar note out - the crisp shiver of it shockingly pale against his skin - and places that on the tablecloth too, between them like a declaration of war.  _ One Nation Under God.  _

“Thank you, Lance,” Darla says, all teeth, patting Gloria on her arm with a kind of artificial tenderness. “That’s not something you’d want to run off with, I’m sure.”

“No problem,” Lance says. “Have a good night, ladies. Unless you need me for anything else, I’ll be back at the bar. You can find me there.” 

Lance doesn’t make eye contact with Keith on the way past again, but he doesn’t have to. Even from here, Keith can see the light blaring out of Lance’s eyes. It’s the same look Lance had the other night, leading the way through the tall grass, his hold on Keith’s hand sure even as Keith could hear his voice shake. 

Defiance looks good on him. 

 

*

 

Keith wakes the next day, yanks on his jacket, grabs his boots in one hand and makes it for the door. He nearly clears the foot of Shiro’s bed before Shiro stirs, opening groggy, sleep-clouded eyes to ask, “Keith?” 

It’s not an accusation, Keith reminds himself, even as his stomach plummets. 

“I’m heading out for a while,” Keith says. “I’ll be back for dinner tonight, alright?” 

He flees before Shiro can make something out of the early hour, the guilt in Keith’s voice - he’s a lawyer after all, like their parents were. That is to say, he’s good at drawing out a confession, and even better at picking it apart. Here are the loose threads in your alibi. Here, watch me make you unravel.  

The typical Florida heat is only beginning. After all, it’s only eight in the morning. Still, the dew beribboning the grass has long since baked away but for in the shadows of buildings, where it clings, damp and comforting, as Keith trudges, leaning against the cool of a wall to pull on his boots. He thinks he sees Nyma from a distance, the slice of her tiger smile, but he’s not sure if she’s laughing with him or at him. Either way, he’s still sure that he won’t like the answer. 

He catches Lance peeling off out of the back gate, hands in his pockets. Keith falls into step with him, sees the startle of it jolt through Lance. He glances Keith’s way once, quickly, then away, then settles back into his own skin. 

“I didn’t know you knew there were two eight o’clocks in a day,” Lance says dryly, to which Keith replies, “I’m on holiday, Lance,” to which Lance replies, “I know.” 

“I couldn’t stop watching you the other day.”

“Yeah, I  _ know _ .” When Keith looks out of the corner of his eyes, Lance is smiling down at the ground. The pale of his shirt, stretched tight across his shoulders, seems worn improbably soft. Keith curls his hands into fists, jams them into his jacket pockets, focuses back on his feet. 

There’s a silence. It’s almost awkward. What’s he supposed to say, given everything? Keith is used to speaking in the space between words when it comes to this, and Lance being so reachable right now somehow makes it worse. Keith’s barely watching their surroundings. He watches Lance watch them instead, his fists so tight he can feel the pulse of blood in them like a double heartbeat. At one point, Lance reaches out, presses one palm lightly against Keith’s arm.  _ Stay.  _ Keith, burning, telling himself he’s not sore about it, that Lance can’t live in his pocket, ducks his head as Lance crosses the road without him. It’s only as a group of waiters come into view at the same time, carrying their jackets and heading towards the hotel, that Keith realises why. They yawn into the cup of their hands and nod at Lance as they pass; one of them claps him on the back. 

“Tell your sister I said hey,” another tells him. 

“Only if you tell your mother the same from me,” Lance retorts. He’s frowning, but they both laugh. When the group slips into the encroaching shadow of the hotel, Lance crosses back to stand at Keith’s side. 

“Sorry,” he mutters. 

“No, it’s fine,” Keith replies. “Maybe I should go back, though.” 

“No,” Lance says, very clearly. Then he blinks. “I mean - not unless you’d rather -”

It’s a nice reminder. They’re both bad at this. Keith smiles and shakes his head. 

“I want to go somewhere else,” Keith finds himself saying. The  _ with you  _ dies on his tongue. 

“We can do that,” Lance offers, as though he’s heard anyway. “I have to drop something off first, but -”

“I can wait.” 

This is much easier when Keith is kissing him. He tries to find a way to say that, but instead he says, “Sorry about your shirt.” 

It takes Lance a second to realise what Keith means. Keith can see when he does realise because red sweeps up Lance’s neck, across his face, tinting his ears feverish. 

“It’s - not - it’s not like I minded,” Lance manages, sounding strangled, then they catch each other’s eye and both laugh, nervously. It helps. Lance runs a hand through his hair and says, “Jesus Christ. This is -”

“Yeah,” Keith echoes. “You too?” 

“Uh huh,” Lance says, then swings his gaze back to stare resolutely down the road. “Okay, so it may not look like I’m freaking out. I’m pretty good at not looking like I’m freaking out, but I just - I’m not the only one freaking out, so that’s good. I guess.”

“I thought you planned it,” Keith says, “You know, you found somewhere. You wrote me a  _ note, _ ” and Lance makes an annoyed noise and goes, “Yes! Maybe! I was -”

“You were?” Keith prompts. 

“Hopeful, you know? But I didn’t expect it to work  _ that  _ well!” and Keith has to laugh again, this time with relief. Lance’s still hunching his shoulders like a cat dropped in a bath.

“I can’t believe you pulled that with her, you know. Yesterday, I mean,” Keith tells him. “Cindy was wetting herself.” 

“I can’t believe I did either,” Lance confesses, “‘Cause honestly? Between you and me? I was nearly pulling a Cindy too.”  

Keith notices Lance turning them down side streets which ripple, widening out into pavements that cut back down to alleyways, back and forth and unfamiliar. Keith notices murals spilling out across the pale stone of cafeterias, American stars against creamy orange, stripes unfurling along the corners of supermarket buildings. He sees the same name over and over, stamped on buildings like some kind of signpost home: Cuba, Cuba, Cuba. Someone’s painted out how many miles it is from the sidewalk to Havana.  _ Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free:  _ Keith knew Lance’s family weren’t the only ones to bolt out from the new government in Cuba, but there’s nothing to newsprint, not when faced with the city Lance lives in, all in a different language. They keep seeing people he knows, even though Lance seems to be trying to keep his head down. 

He calls Keith a friend from work. It doesn’t bother Keith, not with how Lance glances at him after, hot-eyed, grinning. It’s a shared secret. They walk past the arch of Domino Park gate and Lance keeps a close eye on Keith, maybe wondering if he’ll lose him somehow, as the curtains in the windows get cheaper. Keith sticks close to his side. 

Here’s the thing: Keith’s never lived anywhere outside of Washington state, but he knows what it is, to have that needling not-belonging settled under your skin. Being the only boy like you in the room can feel like the only boy like you in the world some days. The only boy in the whole damn universe. 

The building Lance finally brings them to a stop in front of is split into apartments, a metal staircase fixed to the front and leading up. On the third floor, a woman in a bright housecoat, slung on open over a dress like melted butter, leans out on that section of the stairs’ landing, smoking a cigarette. He sees her smile when she sees Lance, how she hastily stubs it out underfoot, and realises who it must be seconds before she calls out, “Lance! Angel! There you are!” 

“Oh, shit,” Lance says under his breath, before waving back. Keith stifles a smile. “Hey, Mama! Here I am! I - I thought you were out at the hairdresser?”   

“Oh, they cancelled again. Something about his grandmother being sick, what do I know. Who’s with you then?” 

Lance’s mother peers over the railing at Keith with blatant interest. Keith can’t tell much about her from this distance but that she has auburn hair in set curls around her shoulders. It explains the glints of red he catches in Lance’s hair sometimes. 

“Uh,” Lance says, eloquently. Keith elbows him. Without looking away from his mother, Lance elbows him back. “Just a friend, Mama. You know, friends. People have them.”

“Well, let’s get a good look at him, then!” She leans even further over the railing, if possible. Keith notices she’s barefoot. 

“Oh, yeah, you don’t need to -” Lance glances at Keith out of the corner of his eyes. “Mama, I’m only dropping off your share from this month, and then we’re headed out, you know? He doesn’t need to be introduced.”  

“Don’t be ridiculous, Lance,” his mother admonishes, and then she turns to Keith. Reaches out her hand. Beckons. “Come on up, honey. Doesn’t need to be introduced, Jesus. I raised you better than that.” 

Lance goes first, and Keith follows, drawn into orbit. The stairs creak under Keith’s feet, shifting like some fresh gravity, the first step in the dust of a new planet. His hand, faintly limned with sweat from the rising morning heat, sticks to the painted iron railing, paint flakes clinging darkly to the skin when he pulls away. Lance watches him, sharp-eyed, over his shoulder. Keith smiles at him and Lance smiles back, automatically, helplessly, looking like he makes Keith feel: shaken often and easy down to his bones. If a boy falls in secret, no one’s there to hear it. Does that mean it didn’t happen? 

And when Keith was seventeen, he linked his arm with Shiro’s and walked fifteen blocks down the main thoroughfare, stopping traffic, stopping people, making their movement the hinge the day revolved on, singing  _ can’t take us all in off the street, can’t take us all, die on our feet.  _ He thinks of it every time Lance looks over at him like that, thinks of dying on his feet every second his heart stops, every beat after where it restarts, the absence in between where there’s just silence. 

“After you,” Lance says, almost mockingly, gesturing to the open door. Keith pushes aside the beaded curtain, slick and plastic under his hands and hung just inside the doorframe, and ducks into the apartment. Lance is a shadow at his back.  

The apartment is badly lit - the windows small and high - and it’s compensated for with flowers. When Keith reaches out touch one, they’re fake, faintly waxy under his fingertips. He looks at Lance, who shrugs minutely, and remembers the way Lance has to catch his breath, and realises: fake flowers for a son with delicate lungs. Before he can say anything, Lance’s mother is wrapping Lance up in an exuberant hug, her housecoat bright even in the gloom. Her lipstick matches, Keith notices, blinks back a sudden memory of watching his own mother line her mouth cerise before going out for dinner with his father. 

“Max, your boy’s come home to see us!” she shouts towards the back of the room, her hand pressed wide between Lance’s shoulder blades. Her wedding ring is dull with years and her voice ricochets off the plaster. “Max!”  

She’s thinner than Keith expected, the bones of her face higher than he imagined. Keith isn’t sure what he’d pictured when he pictured Lance’s family, but then she pulls away, her hands firm on Lance’s shoulders now, inspecting him. Lance endures it patiently, eyes flickering over to Keith. 

“How’s work?” she says, brushing an imaginary piece of lint off one shoulder. Lance rolls his eyes. 

“Work’s good.”

“Every time, you know,” she says, turning abruptly to Keith, “Every time, he says that. Every time I ask. “How’s work,” I say, and his sister, she’ll say, “Oh, it was terrible,” or “We had that one monster of a man in,” or something, but Lance is always, “It’s good, Mama.” It’s how I know he’s lying.” She turns back to Lance, and starts trying to tuck the untucked half of his t-shirt into his waistband; he immediately slaps her hands away and steps backwards, nearly colliding into Keith. “Lance, they’ll think you can’t dress yourself out there on the street!” 

“Mama, I’m twenty-one. If they think I can’t dress myself, it’s because they’re like you and keep thinking I’m eight.” She tries to smooth down an unruly part of his hair and he ducks under her arm, laughing and frowning at the same time. “Cut it out!” 

Keith suppresses a smile and turns to look at the wall. There’s a photograph of what must be a younger version of Lance’s mother in a pale sundress, a tall man that could be Lance in five years smiling at her, his face half obscured as he turns to kiss her on the cheek. Another photograph of a christening; Lance in a suit, his mother, a young woman with pin-curled hair and a full, sulking mouth, holding a beribboned child in her arms. A studio portrait of a young boy looking bored at First Communion. Keith squints at it. 

“Yeah, that’s me,” Lance mutters, passing by, “Now stop looking at it,” and flips it face down. “Mama, look, didn’t you bring us up here so you could have a nice new boy to torture?” 

There’s another photo, pride of place on the dresser, Keith notices: it’s a whole family photo, he’d guess, by the numbers, crowded on the steps of a block of apartments with wide windows, the sunlight so bright it blurs out some of their faces. He sees the date below, in pencil.  _ Varadero Beach, April,  1959.  _ Lance slips behind his mother and pulls the folded brown envelope out of his back pocket, puts it into an open handbag on the table. Keith realises. It must have been payday this week. The envelope looks nearly full. Keith stares, and it gets Lance’s mother’s attention, and so she turns and catches Lance just before he pulls his hand away. 

“Lance,” she says, frowning. Her voice is soft, unsure. “Honey, I don’t -” 

“Go talk to Keith, Mama,” Lance says, pushing her gently towards Keith. “You haven’t even offered him something to drink.” 

Over his shoulder, he looks directly at Keith, almost pleading. Keith goes, “I sure am thirsty.” Lance pulls a face; he’s clearly still as bad as liar as ever, but Lance’s mother takes the bait. 

“Oh, Max got us some cola earlier today,” she says, face brightening. “It’s in the icebox, I’ll go get it for you! You know, Lance never brings friends home. Not boys. A boy needs other boys around, don’t you think?”

“That makes sense,” Keith manages, and Lance shoots him a ferocious look. 

“He brings Nyma - do you know Nyma?” 

“I know Nyma,” Keith says, feeling something vaguely hysterical rising in him at the look Lance is giving his mother out of her view. “She’s...nice.” 

“She says Lance is a lovely dancer,” Lance’s mother tells Keith brightly, heading out of the room.  

“I wouldn’t know,” Keith replies, calling after her just before she disappears out of sight. “But yes, she does say that.”

There’s a moment where Lance and Keith just look at each other, listening to the tread of his mother’s step and her shouting again for Lance’s father. 

“ _That makes sense_ ,” Lance repeats, grimacing. “ _ I wouldn’t know. _ ” Keith snickers, and Lance points a finger at him and says, “Not a word.” 

“It’s fine. I like her.”

“Not one word, Keith.”

“No, I really like her!” Keith casts his eyes over to the dresser, feels Lance gaze follow him. “You missed the photo of you in high school, by the way.” 

Lance swears. Keith gives in and laughs. He hears running feet and looks up when a toddler runs full speed into the room, whooshes past him, and clings to Lance’s legs. Lance immediately bends down to pick her up, moving her to his hip. 

“Morning, Grace,” he says, and kisses her on the top of her head. “Where’s your mom?”  

“Wondering why you’re spending your day off here,” a young woman says dryly, following, the lemon of her capris so pale they appear almost neon in the apartment. “Haven’t you got anywhere else to go?”

She stops when she sees Keith. It’s barely a falter before she keeps walking, but she walks the way Lance does, all limbs, and Keith is finding it easier to read missed steps these days. 

“Dad ran out on a job,” she tells Lance, “He did tell her. Mama just forgot again. Who’s the new kid?”

“Friend from work.”

“Uh-huh?” She squints at him through the semi-gloom, then holds out her hand. Keith takes it, feels cool skin and the brush of her plastic bangles briefly before she pulls back and smiles, tilting her head. “Luciana. I’m one of the sisters.” 

“Oh,” Keith says, “Okay. Nice to meet you.”

“She’s older,” Lance explains. “Grace is my niece.”

“I’m three,” Grace tells Keith, turning away from Lance to blink at him. Lance presses his face against hers for a moment, then pulls back and blows a raspberry against her forehead. She shrieks in delight, wriggling. 

“Yes, you are,” Lance says, smiling at her. Even as she twists, he doesn’t drop her, just settles her weight more firmly against him. “You’re exactly three.”

“And next week I’m four!” she adds. 

“Right,” Keith manages, then, “Happy birthday?”  

Luciana snorts. 

“Not used to kids?” she asks. 

“I don’t know if he ever was one,” Lance informs her.

“I was in an orphanage until I was about eight,” Keith finds himself admitting. It’s not something he usually brings out, and the brief silence that follows - Lance wide-eyed at him - is part of why. Pity is something that’s been at his heels for years, sinking below the surface only to reach back up after the car crash, chasing him and Shiro across the city when people stared at them, watching how Shiro ate, Keith stepping on their feet deliberately on his way past to the jukebox. 

“Huh,” Lance says after a second, “You know, I didn’t know that.”

“You didn’t ask,” Keith replies. They lock eyes for a moment that stretches, and then snaps with the sound of Lance’s mother bustling back into the room with two opened bottles of Coca-Cola. 

“You boys got plans today?” she asks, setting them down. 

“Thank you,” Keith tells her, and she beams at him, then at Lance. 

“Look at those manners! Where on Earth did you pick him up from?” 

“I already said, Mama,” Lance says. Keith can feel the strain running underneath it. “Keith is just a buddy from the hotel.” 

It’s technically not a lie, but it’s the half-truth that reminds Keith how uncomfortable this whole situation must be for Lance. He never asked for Keith to be here, and yet here he is, sitting at his mother’s table.  For a long moment, Keith watches Lance and his sister have a conversation with just their eyes. Sweat prickles at the back of his neck, cooling in the air drifting in through the door. The plastic beads of the door curtain clink against each other. Keith can’t help but watch them look at each other. They’re similar heights, Luciana tall for her age, and where the irises of Lance’s eyes shine transparent like glass in the faint light, Luciana’s are still, dark water. 

“Mama,” Lance says carefully, finally tearing his eyes away from Luciana’s steady, implacable gaze, “Keith and I should really get going. I want to show him the boardwalk. Thanks for the drinks.”

Luciana snorts softly, and then pushes away from the wall. 

“I’ll walk you out,” she says, and Lance says, immediately, something sparking under his skin, “It’s not been that long since I lived here, Luci.”

“Maybe I want to catch up with my baby brother.”

“Lance,” his mother scolds without heat, “Be nice to your sister.” She pauses, glancing between them. “Are you two fighting again?” She turns to Keith, a little conspiratorial. “The fights they had, growing up.” 

“He’s been home five minutes, Mama,” Luciana replies lightly. “What could he have done for us to fight about already?” She doesn’t look at Keith. 

Lance walks over to his mother, quickly, bottle cold in hand. He leans down to drop a kiss on her cheek, his other hand on the shoulder of her housecoat.

“See you around, Mama.”

“Next Sunday?”

Lance winces imperceptibly, but smiles over it. 

“I’m out dancing on Saturday, Mama. I’ll be around Sunday night, okay?” 

“With Nyma again?” Mama says, “I know you said you aren’t - is there another girl you’re not telling us about?” 

“You know I would tell if you if there was a girl,” Lance replies. 

Looking away, Keith accidentally catches Luciana’s eye; following her line of sight, he realises she’s looking at his inner wrist, where he’s turned the face of his watch. It’s easier to check the time whilst reading that way. He registers the glint of new metal in the dark. The cost of it. Automatically, he covers it with his hand. Luciana looks at him silently, expressionless.  

Lance is at his side suddenly, hand on his upper arm, and moving them forwards. They make it halfway down the stairs, feet clattering, before Keith realises Luciana has followed them out. She calls something after them in Spanish, and Lance stops, rocking back on his heels. He retorts without looking back at her, but doesn’t move. Keith can feel the way annoyance goes through Lance, can recognise it on the other side of the hotel pavilion. This close, when he’s not trying to smother it, it’s unmistakable. 

“What’s she saying?” Keith asks, painfully aware he’s no clue.  Lance rolls his eyes. 

“Just give me a minute,” is all Lance offers in reply, before turning around. Keith, unsure whether he should keep walking down the stairs or not, stays put, feet edging over the lip of a step. He watches Lance’s shoulders, feels the beat of the sun on his own, and hears Lance say Keith’s name, sees Lance turn to check how much Keith might be following. Keith turns to look out at the street, the chill from the bottle he's holding slipping up his arm. 

He doesn’t think Lance hears the way his voice just changed when he said Keith’s name. From the tone Luciana is using, he thinks maybe she did. Lance snarls something that has Luciana spitting the same thing back; they both look hurriedly to the open window, but there’s no response from inside the apartment. Lance is all gestures, all movement, restless with agitation; Luciana has her arms folded, pinning her hands close to her sides. She unfolds them slowly, incrementally, and reaches out for Lance’s arm. He yanks it anyway, and turns on his heel. 

“Lance,” she tries, as Lance brushes past Keith on the stairs and Keith, without thinking, heads after him. 

“Quit it,” Lance snaps, reverting back to English, “Fix your own life.” He whirls around so fast the softer, “This one is mine,” catches and disperses on the air. Keith isn’t sure Luciana heard it. He’s not sure he was meant to.

“Lance,” Keith says quietly. He can guess what she’s saying. It’s Shiro in the car, going  _ what are you thinking?   _ It’s Keith in the car thinking  _ does wanting him back when I know what he could lose make me a bad person? _ It’s Lance saying  _ rich people are careless.  _ Lance hooks his fingers around Keith’s wrist and starts pulling him along after him. Keith lets him do it for at least six strides before pulling his wrist free and going, “Don’t drag me,” and Lance mutters, “Sorry,” and looks down at the ground. There’s a minute of silence whilst they head to the end of the street, Lance chewing on his lower lip and casting glances behind them. Luci is nowhere to be seen. 

“Grace is a nice name,” Keith begins hesitantly.   

“She’s named after Grace Kelly,” Lance tells him. “Luci was wild about her growing up.” Then: “I probably shouldn’t have said any of that to her.”

“I told Shiro to fuck off back to Washington,” Keith offers, because it’s a shitty way of trying to fix this but it’s what he has, and Lance laughs despite his guilty expression. “I told him I’d walk before I got in the car with him again.” 

“How soon did you get back in the car?” Lance asks, glancing at him sidelong, and laughs again at Keith’s face. “Yeah, thought so. Did you make it a whole minute?” 

“I don’t want you to fighting with her,” Keith says, and Lance frowns at him. “Not over me. I’m not stupid, you know. I guessed it might be -”

“It’s not about you,” Lance says, raises his eyebrows at Keith’s expression and drops his own eyes to the floor, where he scuffs his boot against the sidewalk. 

“Bullshit,” Keith says, and Lance sighs. 

“It’s not, though,” Lance says. “You’re just, I don’t know, you’re just the catalyst. This would have happened one day. It’s about me, and -”

“Bad ideas?” Keith can’t help but interrupt with. Lance grins at him, something a bit twisted in it. 

“Something like that,” Lance concedes. “Come on, it’s my day off. Let’s show you something nice.” 

“You can try.” 

 

*

 

By the time Keith catches up to him, gasping for breath, Lance is leaning against the corner wall, waiting for him, the soft pale green of his t-shirt stretching across his shoulders and making Keith’s own skin prickle. There’s a pair of sunglasses hooked into the shirt pocket, and he’s chewing gum. Out of his uniform, he could be any of the twenty or so blue-jeaned boys littering the start of the boardwalk, their gazes hot on girls, smoke trailing lazily out of their mouths. Out of sight, they could be anyone. For a moment, Keith lets himself imagine having met Lance like this, on a summer’s afternoon, taking Lance’s hand in the half-shadow of the fortune teller’s and offering to buy him a drink, Keith’s fancy fake ID burning in his own back pocket. He wonders in another world if they’d have made their way here, or if they’d still be warily orbiting each other, their own pride the gravity forcing them apart. 

On catching Keith’s eye, Lance blows up a bubble, pops it, and winks. 

“You clean up nice, baby,” Lance tells him, eyes dragging over Keith. 

“You’re an asshole,” Keith says, folding his arms and waiting for Lance to slip his shoes back on. 

“You’re late,” Lance counters, falling to step next to him easily.

“You cheated. I want a rematch.” 

Lance snorts. 

“What, did you get lost? It was barely a hundred metres, Keith.”

“I ran into a guy,” Keith admits, “He came out of nowhere,” and Lance barks out a laugh. 

“Looks like you got away with it, though. You and your nice manners.”

“Told him I was late for a date. He asked if you were _all that_ and all.” 

“Hope you told them I was the prettiest girl you’ve ever seen.” 

Keith hums consideringly under his breath, as though debating, until they round past one of the abandoned beach-houses that form the outer edge of the boardwalk, when he settles for pushing Lance against the wall and kissing him, hard and close-lipped, a hand on his shoulder for balance. Lance smells like salt air and synthetic grape, and when his knees buckle Keith steps back, grinning.

“You’re not bad,” Keith says. Lance stares at him, wide-eyed. “Hurry up. I want to go on that one upside-down thing.” 

“You’re a monster,” Lance informs Keith, sounding delighted about it. “You’re a -”

“Yeah, yeah. Let’s go.” 

Keith grabs Lance’s wrist and tows him until Lance pulls his arm away and says, sounding amused, “Do you even know the way?” 

“Why do I need to? Isn’t that why I brought you?”

“I invited you!”

When they make it to the ticket gate, Keith goes to get out his wallet and Lance beats him, pulling his own out of his back pocket and grabbing hold of Keith’s arm to still him at the same time. 

“I’ll get it,” he says. It sounds like  _ Let me get this.  _

Keith isn’t stupid. He knows Lance knows how to sew when Keith would get it sent somewhere, that he eats in the staff cafeteria, that the tips the Glorias give him are - were? - are - cruel in how easily they drop half his week’s wages into his hand. He’s never seen Lance working out numbers, but then he’s never seen Lance have to write down an order either. When he looks at Lance, Lance is watching him very carefully.  

“Yeah,” Keith says, “I’d like that,” and Lance grins at him, before sliding the dollar bills across the counter without hesitation. 

“Have fun, kids,” the woman at the counter says, sliding the tickets back. She’s smiling at them, very deliberately. It takes Keith a beat to pick up on it, the weight of the smile and the way her eyes drift between the two of them, and another beat to translate it, but when he does, he feels himself colour.  He nearly runs after Lance. 

“Lance,” he whispers, “Lance, I think she was -”

“I’ve seen her at the club,” Lance tells him. They walk a couple more steps together before Keith realises Lance is laughing. 

“What is it?”

“Okay,” Lance says, “So it might not be that funny. But it’s kind of funny. But it might not be, like, you know, you might not find it that funny, but -”

“Try me.” 

Lance is biting his lip to try and stifle his smile. It’s not working. It makes him look his age. 

“Totally paid for that with one of Gloria Hearst's tips,” he says, and then he’s suddenly laughing out loud, properly, infectiously, the sun picking out red and gold in his hair. Keith falls into laughing with him like falling into step, with the familiarity of dancing, knowing exactly where Lance will be next. Lance is wheezing, bent double, holding onto Keith to keep himself up, his hands warm on Keith’s bare arms. Keith thinks  _ I love you  _ so strongly he’s half-certain he’s said it out loud. Half-certain, not half-afraid. The lack of fear is what he remembers later. 

“Okay, okay,” Lance says, “Okay, I’m fine. I’m fine. It’s not that funny. I just - if I just don’t think about it ever again - it’ll get less funny.” He straightens back up again, takes a deep breath, and turns determinedly towards the entrance, which is pastel-painted and peeling in places. Lance digs in his pocket and pulls out a packet of the bubblegum. 

“Want some?” he offers. 

“Nope,” Keith says, “I don’t like the flavour. It’s too fake.”

“Goddamn rich kid,” Lance says, popping another strip into his mouth.  

“Wait,” Keith says, “Where did it go? From earlier? Shouldn’t you have choked?”

“Wow.”

“I’m just saying!” 

“I swallowed it before. When you, uh,” Lance’s eyes dart to the family nearby, flustered.  _ When you kissed me.  _ Keith laughs, and laughs again when Lance looks indignant, and wonders quietly when he can kiss him again, his heart a ticking clock counting down. 

“Lance, that’s gross.”

“You’re gross.”

“You like gross,” Keith feels duty bound to mention.

“Never said I didn’t.” Lance pops another bubble. 

“Yeah, you’re gonna wanna stop chewing that,” Keith tells him, “You said I could pick first.”

“So?”

“So we’re going on that.” 

He watches Lance follow the line of his arm as he points, watches Lance’s expression shift. His eyes widen as he takes the rollercoaster in. 

“Jesus Christ,” Lance says, too loud. Nearby, a mother tuts and shoves her stroller away from the two of them a little too forcefully to be casual. Lance bites his lip, looking after her, looking vaguely guilty, until Keith leans over and pinches his arm and Lance flinches, focusing back on him. “Ow, what was that - Keith, you can’t be serious. You want to go on that first?”

“Yep,” Keith says, amused at how Lance shakes his head, horrified. “You promised.” 

“Can’t you be gentle with me?” Lance whines, “I don’t know, ease into it -”

“Do you want me to buy you dinner first?” Keith retorts, deadpan, and Lance makes an indignant sound in reply. “Close your eyes. It'll be fine. Unless you’re scared -” 

The look Lance gives him - bleak and betrayed - is almost as haughty as the way he marches off towards the queue without Keith, leaving Keith laughing and scrambling after him. 

“You really don’t gotta -” Keith starts. 

“They built this here the year I was born,” Lance huffs, “You think I’m going to be scared out of it by a kid from goddamn Washington?” 

“You weren’t born here, Lance,” Keith feels the need to point out. 

“Did I ask you?” Lance retorts, “No, I didn’t. Get in the queue, Keith.”

Keith gets in the queue. Next to them, a boy presses a girl against the chain-link of the fence, presses his mouth against hers. She giggles, wraps herself up in him, and Keith watches Lance watch them with some kind of strange look on his face until Lance catches his eye and smiles. Keith elbows him. Lance elbows him back. It doesn’t make it alright, but it does make it enough. They go on the rollercoaster three times. The third time it’s Lance’s idea, Keith’s ears ringing as he stumbles through the exit turnstile, the sun in his eyes and Lance next to him, laughing hysterically still, laughing more in the first hour of the afternoon than Keith has ever heard him. 

“Couldn’t get a date in time?” the operator says, all sympathy, eyeing the two of them sat side-by-side at the front of the carriage. Lance grins right at him and says, “None of them would have us.” 

“Better luck next time, kid,” the operator replies.  

“Could be worse,” Lance says to him. He winks at Keith when he turns his back on them both. 

Keith is mesmerised, hooked on the sort of sunlight boy Lance becomes less than half an hour away from the hotel. It’s every glimpse of how Lance might be outside of his uniform, his careful hands, the way he says ma’am, turned up loud as it can go; turned up and into the absence of tension in Lance’s spine, into breathlessness in Keith’s throat. Keith had asked Lance about it earlier, worried someone would recognise them. Lance had laughed, hard and mean, and said  _ you think any of them would be seen dead this far down the boardwalk?  _ Looking at the peeling paint, the grit under his nails, Keith can see Lance’s point: Keith also thinks the other guests wouldn’t recognise Lance even if they walked past him right now, the usual half-light in his eyes flared outwards into his bones. 

Lance kisses Keith in the back of an empty ghost train, tasting synthetic and sweet, body warm in the dark before throwing himself back into his seat like nothing had ever happened. In the shifting green light, he looks incredibly pleased with himself right up until the first skeleton drops down and he flings himself back across the seat and almost into Keith’s lap. 

“Are you scared?” Keith says, his mouth against Lance’s hair, laughter threading through the syllables. 

“You wish,” Lance mutters back. His knuckles are white, fingers twisted against his own jeans, but he’s stubborn-eyed. Safe in the dark, Keith takes his hand anyway. Not for the first time, laughing quietly under his breath every time Lance flinches at another glowing painted thing, plastered against Keith’s side, Keith thinks about muscle memory: his body is learning Lance’s, and he’s unsure how he’ll ever fit his body against someone else that isn’t - 

Keith is not a naturally malleable person. Just the thought of trying aches. The thought of Lance, quicksilver and adaptable and fast to smile at everyone, even strangers, even if he doesn’t mean it but especially when he does makes Keith feel - 

He comforts himself with the memory of how badly Lance had been shaking the other night as he’d touched Keith, with the memory that Lance doesn’t always know what to do with his hands. 

Later, when Lance sits up to move away, the light at the exit encroaching, it feels like he does it in slow-motion. The first thing he does is let go of Keith’s hand, unwilling; the last thing he does is look away, his eyes bright and secret. 

Later, Keith will pick the lock on one of the abandoned beach huts, shielded from the late-night, languorous couples tripping all over themselves along the boardwalk by Lance’s back, Lance’s voice hissing, “You’re a bad idea, Keith, you’re such a bad idea,” in his ear. He won’t stop saying it, sand getting into his hair as Keith presses him down into the dusty memory of a summer long gone and kisses him back into the present. He won’t stop saying it until he can’t say much of anything, sounds high and trapped, beating like a pulse in his throat. Keith puts Lance’s hands in his hair, biting at the thin skin over his hipbone. Lance insists on yanking his shirt back down, complaining that there might be splinters; and all of it in between weakening Keith with soft-eyed kisses until Keith’s retorts are falling apart, tenderised, entirely without teeth.  

Later, they walk back to the hotel, the pale of it some unearthly monolith in the dark, bleached bone, and Keith waits for Lance to dim again but it seems to be taking longer and longer each time. It’s only as Lance is veering off to his bed in the staff quarters Keith realises it’s never arrived, they’re beyond the event horizon, and - 

Until then, Keith holds on as tight as he dares, unafraid of the painted eyes of monsters that have never been real. Lance’s breath is still unfamiliar against his throat and Keith waits for the ride to end. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brief historical notes for this chapter:
> 
> The area Lance lives in is supposed to be Little Havana, an area of Miami named due to the large numbers of Cuban migrants who fled the Revolution and settled there in the 60s.
> 
> The photo in Lance’s apartment of his whole family is intended to have been taken in the months before the overthrow of the government by Fidel Castro.
> 
> [Grace Kelly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Kelly) was a popular actress in the 1950s, who then became the Princess of Monaco. 
> 
>  
> 
>  


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Without the support and influence of [ewagan](http://ewagan.tumblr.com/), this chapter would have languished for far longer than it has - seriously, some of these scenes are nearly a year old! - so I'm dedicating this one to her. 
> 
> There is now beautiful art of the AU, to be found [here](https://hardlynotnever.tumblr.com/post/167214281805/30-days-of-thanks-day-6-ilgaksu-fav-fic-kick). Please go show the artist some appreciation, I honestly nearly cried real tears for real when I first saw this. Still sometimes do when I just look at it now. 
> 
>  

**1963**

 

“Why didn’t you tell me all of this earlier?” Keith asks. In his hold, the papers tremble. He clenches down until the shiver of them stops dead. 

“I’m telling you now.” Shiro’s voice is calm, but Keith knows him better than anyone else, and it’s the kind of stillness Shiro drops into when he’s not calm at all. “I wasn’t - at the time, the court case was nearly too much for the both of us, Keith, and this all - it wasn’t a history they talked about either. They never said anything about it to me. I mean, Dad was born here. In New York. They probably didn’t think it mattered.”

“It does,” Keith tells him, and Shiro nods.

“It does,” he agrees. “But they did keep this. I don’t know if it was meant for you, but I’m your - I say it is. You should have all of this.”

He gestures to the papers in Keith’s hand, the others on the table, all of them spilling out of their own secret history.  

“I think they also knew what it was to want to run away,” Shiro says, “After the camp. And I think they saw your record and you and it just -” 

“Yeah,” Keith replies. “Yeah, I guess.” 

“I’m gonna leave you to look through them all,” Shiro tells him, standing up, arm braced against the chair for support. It’s a new model and he’s learning to shift his weight on it in the way Shiro learns - which is he runs at something, over and over, determined to break through until something changes. Even knowing all he does, Keith can’t help but see a kind of family resemblance in that. “Call me if you need me, okay?”

“Okay,” Keith says, and watches Shiro shut the door behind him before turning back to the papers. 

 

*

 

The story goes a little something like this: Keith Kogane was born on harbour soil four years after his parents docked in the United States. Born, bred and married in Busan, they had fled the Japanese Occupation of Korea via China and Manchuria, pouring all the money they could into fleeing a government that had made their very language criminal. Their old names, illegal to speak aloud, had been torn away during the last War, and the papers they used to flee called them Azumi and Michio Kogane: names allowed them by the state, and names they would stay on paper. Azumi and Michio Kogane were the names granted residence in the United States. They had been so hungry, the best of the food hoarded by the occupying army, that in a way, they had been forced to swallow themselves. After all, _Azumi_ means safe residence. 

Perhaps they had hopes to change them in time. Maybe they had: if not legally, then in their daily lives. But their death certificates called them the Koganes, and left their only, newly-orphaned son that same name, a small amount of money, and a ward of the state of Washington. There were no photographs of them. It had been a car accident. History has an unfortunate habit of repeating itself. Keith - probably picked from a book of American baby names - would spend the next six years in and out of orphanages, a trouble child with a bad habit of running away.  

It’s not a particularly nice story to take part in. Maybe that’s why Keith’s new parents - Japanese-Americans miles removed from the Koganes’ and their lost first names, smarting still from their own war-wounds - took a look at him, Shiro smiling by their side and said  _ why don’t you try coming home with us? Just for a weekend. If you don’t like it, we’ll bring you straight back here.  _

_ Don’t bring me back here,  _ Keith said, and went to get his coat. It would be another eight years before Keith learnt the meaning of the word  _ occupation _ : how it could write his first family out of their own history. The orphanage themselves didn’t take much notice. Surely, they thought, the Shiroganes were close enough, even sounded similar. Surely there couldn’t be that much difference?  

 

**1965**

 

It starts unravelling like this: 

The two of them, stood at the gate to the vacant hotel, staring at the new, sick gleam of fresh padlocks across the gate, the layered chains of them rattling when Lance tries the gate itself.  There’s a  _ SOLD _ sign on the lawn, the yellow of it reaching out to them, colour mocking in the gloom. 

Keith kicks the gate, once, twice, is going in for a third round, until Lance grabs his shoulder and goes, “It’s not worth it. Keith, it’s not worth it.” And then Lance looks down at him, mouth set, frustration and the night turning his eyes to liquid, something all sheen, and - 

Keith pushes him back against the gate and kisses him, over and over - the whispering of the trees in his ears like laughter, the glint of the swimming pool, chlorine-bright, searing in the corner of his eye.  Anyone could walk by - it’s a side-road, overgrown and empty, but Keith’s learning overlooked doesn’t mean safe - anyone could walk by. Lance arches up under him, turns his head to catch his breath, looks back and pins Keith still with his eyes. 

“Are you -”

“Don’t _stop_ ,” Lance tells him, then: “What are you, a quitter?” 

Afterwards, Keith walks Lance back to the gate, or Lance walks him: it’s hard to tell, with a boy. He thinks about holding Lance’s hand the whole way, and just before they turn through the gate, Lance grabs him in a brief one-armed hug, almost angry, and then takes off ahead of him. Keith watches him go, and then heads to his own room. Shiro, awake and cradling the phone between head and shoulder, watches him head straight into the ensuite with a careful expression. By the time Keith cuts off the water and heads out, Shiro is waiting to brush his teeth. They pass each other in the doorway. Keith makes sure to pretend to be asleep when Shiro gets out, even though Shiro’s always known when he’s faking. 

“Good night, Keith,” he says, and turns off the light. 

 

*

 

September is getting closer every goddamn day. 

 

*

 

The motel is Keith’s idea. He’s been turning it over, slowly in his head, until the thought became familiar. It’s the sort of thing he’s read about, heard about - always half the sentence unfinished, always the end point dissolving away into an ellipsis. With the abandoned hotel suddenly bought, occupied, taken out from under their feet - with how September is looming, and they both know he’ll be leaving -

With how there’s never enough time and quiet and space - 

Empty space, that is, easy space, space that hasn’t had to be hacked out of the corners and boundaries and small liminal spaces of the world, both of them crouching to fit - 

He’s left it, hope-warmed in his mouth until he was sure he was brave enough to say it like it was nothing. Like the words had no weight at all. No hesitation. Just  _ do you know someplace we can go?  _

For a long moment, Lance just stares at him, wide-eyed. The sudden flood of colour in his face is easy enough for Lance to blame on a long shift in the last of the summer heat if Keith asks. It makes teasing him pointless - even without the silence, the way it hangs, catching in Keith’s throat, robbing him of sound. The question itself seems to have cleaned him out of all his other words. Keith shoves his own hands in his pockets. It’s a trick he learnt from watching Shiro give speeches in high school, the grip of his fingers on the podium a way to make sure no one saw them shake. Keith watches the strange, coltish swallow of Lance’s throat out of the corner of his eyes; how the hair at the back of his neck is darker with sweat, how the strange glow of his pale green t-shirt in the evening makes him something fallen out of space. 

Lance tilts his head back against the wall. They’re sat down another side street, legs stretched out across the pavement, side by side. Nowhere else to go. Their ankles brush when Lance draws his knees up to his chest. 

“Sure,” Lance says, then laughs a little under his breath, shaking his head like he’s come up from under some kind of water. “Sure, why not?” 

He turns and leans his forehead against Keith’s temple, his breath shallow in Keith’s ear like a secret. He drops one kiss behind Keith’s ear, tacky and oddly sweet, and then sits back up. 

Keith lets Lance pick it, knowing they’ll have to split the bill for Lance's pride's sake, knowing Lance will still be here after Keith’s gone, that Lance is taking the lion’s share of the risk - knowing that giving this over to Lance’s terms is a way of showing something. Words, after all, aren’t Keith’s strong suit. 

It’s on the other side of the city, and when Keith goes out for the night, he doesn’t say where he’s going, never does anymore, only tells Shiro he’ll be back for breakfast. Keith checks them in. He gives the receptionist the fake name Lance had told him to give, and she says it back, and it’s a strange kind of chant, the weight of the key in his hand a strange kind of burn, and then he goes into the room alone and waits. He keeps the curtains shut and doesn’t take his jacket off. Even that seems too much. He lies back on the thin bedspread and stares at the remnants of old cigarette smoke on the ceiling. He keeps checking his watch. 

Even though they said ten minutes past, it gets to six and Keith can’t sit still, certain somehow this is the wrong room, the wrong place, that Lance is - 

Then he hears a knock at the door. It’s not even fully open before Lance ducks in, head down, glancing at Keith with a little sideways grin. 

“Hey there,” Lance says, low, the grin widening, helpless. Keith feels swallowed by it, by the way happiness and Lance and the two things together keep opening the ground up beneath his feet. Duffel bag slung over one shoulder, Lance is holding a plain white shirt on a hanger. Before Keith can say anything, Lance gestures towards the wardrobe and goes “I’m just gonna -”

“Go ahead.” Keith watches him hang up the shirt, unzip the duffel bag and sling his uniform jacket on over it, then stow the bag in the wardrobe. It’s bizarrely domestic, underpinned by the anticipation chasing through Keith. He’s not sure what kind of expression he’s pulling - only when Lance turns back to face him, Lance’s whole expression slides into a dazed echo, and he swallows. 

“Hi,” Keith hears himself say. It sounds breathless.  

“Didn’t we already do that part?” Lance kicks the wardrobe door shut without looking at it, eyes trained on Keith. It’s not the first time Keith has seen Lance blatantly disregard his surroundings by this point, but it’s always around Keith, he’s noticed, and that makes something in his chest go hot. 

“I guess,” Keith mutters, watching Lance come closer. 

“So,” Lance murmurs, once he’s within reach. “What’s a nice boy like you doing in a place like this?”

He winks, exaggerated, Keith’s reflection right there in his eyes, and Keith laughs. The bravado in his voice is close enough to genuine - Lance has always been a good actor - but he’s sure Lance is shaking. Or maybe it’s him. Or maybe it’s both of them. Still, it breaks some kind of surface tension that was there, congealing, and it leaves them there - just them, only them. 

The rest is easy. 

 

*

 

“It’s weird. You’re weird,” Keith decides. 

Lance pulls back from where he’s kissing Keith’s neck.

“Weird how?” he asks, some kind of stung pride in his voice. Keith pushes his hair out of his eyes for him. Quietly, he revels in the way Lance watches him, all attention, gets lost in it for a moment before Lance nudges him and repeats himself. “Weird how?”  

“I was so sure you didn’t like me as much.” Keith sits up, back to the headboard. It’s a horrible fabric. Lance rolls onto his front, props his head up in his hand. “I thought you hated me, at first.”

“I didn’t hate you,” Lance insists. 

“You told Nyma to put me back,” Keith can’t help but argue. “You were furious when you found out about the lessons, don’t act like you weren’t. You didn’t like me.” 

“That doesn’t mean I hated you.” The set of Lance’s mouth is certain. It’s his eyes that are embarrassed when he says, “It wasn’t - Nyma already knew. I thought she was just showing me what I couldn’t have. Or what I could have, if I just -” 

“She already knew?” Keith feels like he’s missing something. Lance’s sigh confirms it. “Lance, what are you trying to say?”

Lance makes an annoyed noise and shoves his face against the nearest pillow. He mumbles directly into the fabric. 

“Lance.” 

“I didn’t like what you were doing to me, alright?” Lance mutters, audible now. “You were right there, and I was right there, but we’re not from the same kind of place. I didn’t want any trouble, but you were still right there, all the time, in my face, even though I couldn’t have you. And I couldn’t help it.”

Keith is speechless for a moment. 

“I didn’t hate you, Keith.”  

“Are you saying you were jealous?” Keith finally manages. Lance glares at him. 

“I  _ said  _ I couldn’t help it.” 

Keith kisses him because he has to. He catches himself smiling, even as his chest is hurting, wide enough into the kiss that Lance must be able to feel it. Lance pulls away, raising his eyebrows. 

“Me too,” Keith tells him before Lance can open his mouth. “I wanted to hate Nyma over having you, only I couldn’t. It’s like she wouldn’t let me.”

“That sounds familiar.” Lance sighs. “Still, all this time, nobody ever really told me I shouldn’t, you know? That I shouldn’t like it. Not out loud.” 

“It?”

“This,” Lance corrects himself, with a devastating shrug. He runs his hand along the line of Keith’s arm, just in case Keith couldn’t tell what he meant exactly, then corrects himself again, ever more honest. “You. Nobody’s ever said to me I shouldn’t - but I knew anyway.” He tilts his head. “Isn’t that funny?” 

“That’s not funny,” Keith tells him. Lance shrugs again. 

“Yeah,” he mutters, chewing his lip. “Not really. Hey, wanna hear a secret?” 

Keith nods. Lance leans over, mouth to Keith’s ear and whispers: “I wish this was our bed. I wish this was all ours.” 

He places a kiss just under Keith’s ear, like a marker, like punctuation. It fills up Keith’s whole chest until he can’t breathe with it. Then it keeps going, as Lance quickly gets up, pulls on his t-shirt and his jeans.  

“I’m gonna get a soda. I saw a place across the road,” he says, too fast, too much explanation. “Want one?” 

“Sure,” Keith hears himself saying. He is still reeling. He’s reeling long after Lance shuts the door. 

He sits there with the curtains drawn, full of light.  

They have arrived somewhere, at a place beyond shame. It shouldn’t feel extraordinary. It does.  

 

*

 

“Tell me,” Keith says, later. The bite of soda still lingers in his mouth, even though the can is empty and his mouth feels too-hot to the touch. “Tell me how it’d be. If it was like that. If we had all this.”

_All this:_ a bed, a wardrobe, a bathroom. Ill-fitting in the space. None of it new. 

When he braves a look at Lance, Lance’s face is surprised, then stricken. He leans forward and presses his face against Keith’s hair. 

Desire, contentment, daydreams. All of them are subjective. 

“We’d fight all the time.” Lance huffs out a laugh against Keith’s temple. 

“We wouldn’t!” Keith insists, struggling to sit up, quieting when Lance cups a hand around the back of his neck and kisses him, slow and careful, until Keith’s eyes fall shut and he falls back against the bed. 

When Keith opens his eyes, Lance is watching him, propped up on one elbow, eyes warm. He reaches out and tucks some of Keith’s hair behind one ear.  _ I hope someone’s nice to you one day, Keith,  _ Nyma had said, a lifetime ago when Keith looked at Lance and ached with something he couldn’t articulate. Still unaware of how Lance would learn to hold him with a quiet and transmuted tenderness, an alchemy with wonder as its basest element.  

“Keep going?” Keith asks. When he can’t bear the look Lance gives him any longer, he closes his eyes. 

“We’d have an apartment,” Lance says, slowly, almost unwillingly, his voice very soft. 

“Wow,” Keith drawls, “A whole apartment,” and then feels terrible when Lance goes, “Yeah. With our own room and everything, rich kid. My imagination has limits.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay. You’ll buy it so I forgive you.” Lance leans back and on his side, so Keith can feel Lance’s breath against his own mouth. “I’ll make us curtains.”

“You can sew?” 

“Keith,” Lance says, laughing, tracing one hand lazily up and down Keith’s arm, “What kind of fancy place is Washington? Just for that, I’m picking the curtains. You don’t get a say.” He sighs again, almost dreamily. “It’s not right next to the boardwalk, but it’s close enough you can see the lights when it gets dark. You can see them through the curtains.”

“They don’t sound like very good curtains.”  

“Oh, come on,” Lance complains, “Everyone’s a critic. That’s it, you’ve got to take a turn,” and when Keith opens his eyes, Lance is watching him, eyes careful and a little strained in counterpoint to his smiling mouth. Keith reaches up and cups Lance’s face, runs his thumb under one of Lance’s eyes, and says, “Sometimes, you take days off work, and nobody shouts at you for it, and it doesn’t matter so we stay like this all day.”

Lance grabs Keith’s wrist and turns to press a kiss into his palm.

“I’d like that,” he whispers.

Keith has to kiss him then, and they get lost in the slide of it for several minutes, until Keith turns his face to get his breath back. Lance runs his thumb along the wing of Keith’s collarbone and says, “What else?” 

When Keith looks at him, disconcerted, trying to remember what they’d been talking about, Lance immediately drags his gaze away and stares at the wall. The tips of his ears have gone red again. 

“Forget it. It’s not -”

“I want a bike,” Keith blurts out, “I already have my license. Nyma told me they have races just before the highway, so -”

“What am I, your good luck kiss?” Lance jokes, grinning down at him. Keith rolls his eyes and shoves Lance off. Lance lands on his back with a huff. “Hey!”

“You’re there with me,” Keith explains, hesitant, feeling stupid for being enamoured of the idea, feeling stupid for being enamoured at all, “I mean, if you wanted to be.”

“Sure,” Lance says. “I love a good hopeless cause.”

“Yeah?” Keith echoes. 

“Yeah.” His voice is little more than breath. “Yeah, of course. Can’t you tell?” 

 

*

 

In the morning, Keith sits on the bed, neatly remade like disguising a crime, and watches Lance button his work shirt closed, comb his hair back until it stays, slip on his shoes. Keith sits on the bed. He’ll wait another twenty minutes, check out, pay in cash. 

It’s not as bad as it could be, Keith thinks. Lance kisses him, up against the door, over and over. Then he slips out from under Keith, slips through the door, and is gone. 

 

*

 

“Be careful,” Shiro warns him after breakfast, voice low. Keith knows why he drops the volume, but that’s also the exact reason why he hates it. “Don’t stare so much. Else you’ll lose his job for him.” 

“I am being careful.” Keith feels the anger rise. It’s not so much as anger at Shiro himself as at how Keith is happy, in this fragile way, and Shiro keeps making it waver. At how, ever since Lance left this morning, ever since he said it, Keith hasn’t been able to stop thinking about how they made the world stop for a while, how they made it theirs. How they talked a future into life like it could ever exist, like it was just waiting for them to reach far enough. 

And it’s embarrassment, as well as anger: embarrassment at being so obvious, so obviously lost, that his own brother can tell. 

“Keith,” Shiro tries, but Keith glares at him. “I’m just saying. Don’t forget. We’re leaving the day after tomorrow, and -”

“Like you’d let me forget.” 

“You still need to pack.” 

“Right.”

“I’m just saying -”

“Have you told him?” 

“Shut up,” Keith rounds on him, viciously, heedless of the presence of nearby waiters, four tables down, cleaning up. “I told you to let me have this, and you can’t even do that, can you?”

“Keith, that’s not what I’m saying. I just think -”

“No, I know. You’d like me to do better. What if I don’t want to do better, though? Did you think of that?”

“You’re not listening -”  

“No, you’re not listening! You never listen to me! You’re always talking about trying not to let people down, you know, and you know what - maybe, maybe it’s like this. Maybe if I’m not talking to you anymore it’s because you’re bad with the truth. Maybe it’s because you don’t want to hear it. How do you think it is, living like that, living on the other side of you? I’m not your shadow, alright -”

The words keep coming, and Shiro stares at him, more than a little stunned. He’s sure people are staring, even though he’s keeping his voice quiet as he can, but he’s not sure he cares. 

“No, you’re not,” Shiro interrupts. “You’re not - you’re my brother. Why else do you think I care about what’s going on?” 

“Sure,” Keith manages. “I know you think I let you down. Sorry about that. I really am. But maybe you ought to think about how you let me down too. Because you have, yeah? You let me down, Shiro.”

He bolts before Shiro can say anything else. 

 

*

 

Later that day, Keith’s stood in the dance studio. Nyma is leaning against the ground-floor side table and she’s looking, looking from Keith to Lance and back, something long and speculative in her gaze. When she rests it on Keith, it feels like she’s reaching into his chest. He breaks his eyes away for fear the truth of it all will spill out of him somehow, unbidden.  

“Lance,” she says slowly, “Can I talk to you for a second?” 

“I’m right here,” Lance says. Keith’s learnt how to read nerves in the flicker of his eyelashes. 

Nyma turns to Keith, and says, “Do you mind, Keith? You know how it is. Girls have to have their secrets.” 

Keith used to wonder what had made Nyma and Lance as close as they were, a month ago when they seemed irreparably in each other’s orbit. He used to wonder what had drawn them to each other - a lonely Cuban boy new to town and a girl who’d always been too tall for her own good. It’s only now he realises where Lance had learnt that eerily convincing fake smile. Now, when he’s watching its perfect twin shape Nyma’s mouth. 

Keith looks at Lance. He knows how much he’s giving away with that alone, but he can’t help it. Lance looks at him in a flash of blue eyes and flatlined mouth. 

“I’ll wait outside,” Keith says, only the last syllables curl up into a question.

“Yeah,” Lance says, “I won’t be long,” and Keith can feel how heavy the silence is as he leaves and shuts the door behind him. 

Outside, the sun is hot and people are laughing. The scent of honeysuckle is so strong Keith can taste it when he breathes. He tries not to imagine what kind of conversation Nyma and Lance are having, but he’s not trying that much. He hears Lance very clearly say, “I know this isn’t a movie, Nyma. What kind of movie looks like us?” and winces, staring at the faint glimmer of the metal hinges under rust; sees the door swing open and whirls back around before Lance steps outside. 

He feels Lance pause at the sight of him, then sigh, then a second, subtle displacement of air as Lance sits beside him on the steps. 

“I said I’d wait outside,” Keith offers. 

“You did.” Lance sounds resigned. “How much did you hear?”

“I didn’t really need to hear that much,” Keith admits. 

Lance hums under his breath in acknowledgement, bringing his thumbnail towards his mouth. Keith catches Lance by the wrist and says, “I don’t want to be the reason you’re fighting with her.”

“You’re not the reason,” Lance murmurs. “I am.”  He glances at Keith and smiles, crooked and heartbreaking. When he pulls his wrist away, it’s gentle, and he drops his hand back down at his side. “Anyway, I don’t want to be the reason you’re fighting with your brother.” 

“You’re not,” Keith breathes in honeysuckle and sunlight and silence. “I am.” 

He twists to look at Lance properly, the line of his face in profile before Lance catches his eye and smiles, a small, quicksilver slip of a smile. He can hear people laughing faintly still, through the trees.

“What do you do after summer is over?” Keith asks him, watches the shadows of the trees bisect Lance’s face when he turns to Keith, surprise visible. Keith’s never asked. Keith’s never wanted to know before. 

“After summer?” 

Keith nods his head. Lance shrugs. 

“I guess I’ll wait and see if I get kept on as winter staff again. If not, I’ll go looking. I’ve been asked to stay on the last few years, though.” 

“Oh,” Keith replies. Helplessly, he thinks  _ there are hotels in Washington,  _ and bites his own lip against the offer. It’s unspeakably cruel. Lance is a boy built to fit against this skyline - that he fits against Keith’s hands is secondary.

Besides, Lance wouldn’t ever leave any more of his family behind. 

Their arms are pressed together, skin-and-sun-hot; Keith’s arm bare and sweat-sticky, Lance’s always covered by starched white cotton, one step removed. Keith blinks against a memory of kissing Lance’s shoulder, his skin warm under Keith’s mouth, freckled like the bridge of his nose. Memory as an underline of desire, rather than punctuating it. Right now, Lance swallows. He doesn’t look away from Keith’s eyes, serious when he says, “I’m trying not to think about it.” 

“Wow,” Keith hears, and startles so badly he nearly hits his own wrist bone on the lip of the step. “That sure explains a lot, Keith.” 

By the time Keith registers Chad, leaning against one of the trees in tennis whites, the rubber of his soles making him silent against the grass, Lance is already standing. In the dusk, Chad is almost glowing. He wants to ask how long Chad has been there - but when he turns to Lance, Lance’s face is pale and set, his expression rapidly shuttering, and so Keith doesn’t say a word. 

Keith’s never asked Lance about the other guests before. He’s guessed it couldn’t have just been female guests who dropped keys into Lance’s pockets with their tips. Now, he sees how Lance’s eyes track Chad, wary as Chad shrugs away from the tree and heads over, and remembers Lance has worked here for three years, that Chad comes here every summer with his parents. 

“Buddy,” Chad says to Keith, “Don’t look so panicked, alright? I get it. Trust me, I get the appeal.” He keeps his eyes on Lance. Lance, for once, stares right back at him, stone-eyed. Chad takes a cigarette case out of his pocket, takes a cigarette out of the case, the platinum of it shining slick.

“I’m sure you have a light,” he says to Lance, syllables crisp. Silently, Lance takes his lighter out, the hotel standard one he keeps on him for the guests, and hands it over. “Thanks. You’re a pal. But yeah, different tastes, Keith.” On  _ different,  _ his eyes linger on Lance. Lance’s jaw tightens but he says nothing. “You could’ve just said, you know?”

“Said what,” Keith asks, the syllables harsh through gritted teeth.

“You don’t gotta be like that,” Chad says, slipping the cigarette into his mouth and brandishing the lighter. His voice is slightly muffled but still clear when he says, “Nothing to be embarrassed about. Everyone slums it at least once.” 

Keith feels something inside him go very, very still. The anger rises so fast, and yet it’s somehow separate to him. He takes a step forward, teetering. 

“Keith,” Lance says, very quietly. When he can bring himself to look at Lance, red behind his eyes, red and the unspoken weight -  _ I know this isn’t a movie, Nyma. What movie looks like us? -  _ he notices Lance is finally looking down at the ground and it makes him feel sick. 

He knows this isn’t how it is. He knows Lance knows. But for a second, it’s every time Lance has tensed under him, panicky every time they heard something that could have been someone walking by. It’s them having to find a shitty motel room on the other side of the city where no one knows them to make the feeling stop. It’s every single time he’s seen Lance breathe easier outside of the hotel, all that oxygen catching fire at once. 

“Hell,” Chad continues, not seeming to notice, “Even I’ve -”   

The punch comes out of nowhere. It’s a blur, leaving Chad stumbling back, his jaw dropping and the cigarette falling out onto the grass, then crushed by his stumbling foot. It’s a near miss, the whistle of knuckles near to Chad’s shirt, near catching against his lower ribs - bone nearly brushing bone. 

The first surprise for Keith is that it wasn’t his fist. Nyma is stood there, the last of the sun making her something radiant, moving out of her studio door as fast as light. And it’s her hand that’s raised: the grind of the fingers into her palm a stone.

The second surprise is this: that she missed because Lance is there now, stood between her and Chad, mouth fraught. It takes Keith a beat to realise, confusion curdling in his gut. Nyma had gone, ready to land a blow, and Lance had pushed Chad out of the path of it.  

“Lance,” Nyma says, breath coming in sharp, making her voice higher than usual. “Lance, get out of my way.” 

“I can’t,” Lance tells her. 

“Of course you can’t,” Chad says. “If it wasn’t for me -” 

She makes for Chad a second time, her expression intent, something satisfied in her eyes when he yelps and steps back, tennis shoes in shadow. 

“I wish I could,” Lance says, though it’s not clear if he’s talking to Nyma or Chad, on account of how he’s looking past Nyma, right at Keith, as he says it, before his eyes snap back to Nyma’s face. 

“Can’t you hear him?” she hisses. 

“Yeah.” Lance shrugs. “He’ll be gone at the end of the season. He always is. You’re not, though.” 

Something in Nyma’s expression flickers off, suddenly, like a lightbulb overheating - a frisson of electricity and heat before silence. She says it then, voice all flat: “Lance.They aren’t renewing my contract.”  

It hits Lance like cold water, Keith can see it, can see the way his eyes go, and he turns instead, rather than look at that, to where Chad is still stood. He’s watching this all now, idly, like it’s a picture show, something made of cellophane, thin and unreal and ready to put your eye right to. 

“When did you find out?” Lance asks. 

“I was going to wait to tell you.” Nyma sounds almost like she’s pleading, which is so wrong it gets right under Keith’s skin. “I knew you were already going to be upset, what with - I was going to wait.” 

She’s twisted her hand all up in her skirt, anchoring herself. She still looks cut adrift. 

“Bitch,” Chad spits, eyes on Nyma. And Lance stops, turns and shoves Chad, both hands held up to his chest, with enough intent behind it that Chad folds under the pressure. Keith stares, held breath a taut pressure in his chest, disbelieving even as Chad goes down. Lance doesn’t advance, he just stands there, at a distance. Chad is under the weight of his dusk-long shadow all the same. 

Chad looks over at Keith, and it’s the shock on his face that makes him realise Chad is expecting Keith to do something. To say something. That, for all Keith has never looked like his neighbours, he’s always had near enough the same things they did. For all that matters, and it does - having changes you as sure as not having -  it’s not enough. It has never been enough. He’s expecting Keith to take his side, but Chad is not his neighbour, or a friend. He’s not anybody. 

Keith walks over to Chad, and kneels down next to him, knees sinking a little in the dirt. He doesn’t kick him, but only because Shiro said not to kick anybody whilst they were down, not ever, something Keith doesn’t exactly subscribe to - if they’re bigger than you, what else can you do? Just lie down yourself? 

But he’s crossing Shiro enough these days. Chad looks up, elbow slipping a little in the same dirt. Down here, he’s not that much bigger anyway. Keith wraps his hand around the crisp ironed collar of Chad’s tennis shirt, and yanks it, hard enough he can feel a few threads give, sending Chad ricocheting forward. 

The sky is blue, Keith is eighteen years old, and Lance can’t lose his job.

“When they ask,” Keith says, breath brushing against Chad’s mouth in the mockery of a kiss, shoving down the panicking bleat of his own heart. “When your people ask what happened out here, you’re going to tell them you tripped, alright?” 

“What?” 

“If you don’t,” Keith says, leaning in, feeling out the sharp edges of the words in his mouth, “I’ll tell my brother what you tried to do to me in the kitchen, and then he’ll tell your parents.”

He doesn’t look behind him, to see whether Nyma and Lance are stood there still, whether they can hear. 

“They won’t believe him,” Chad spits up at him, but Keith can see the liquid fear at the back of his eyes, that quiet present sea every boy like them - for all Chad isn’t like him in anything else - lives up to the neck in. 

It’s the first rule of the playbook, the first law of drowning men: don’t get too close. They’ll only hold you down to keep themselves afloat. 

“Maybe,” Keith says. “Go see.” 

Then he lets go, and watches Chad fall back, drag himself up, scramble off into the night, the flash of his tennis shoes as bright as the whites of his eyes. 

When he turns around, Nyma and Lance are still there, and from the look on their faces, they heard what he’d said. Lance is looking at him like he’s never seen him before. Like instead of being someone further under Keith’s skin than anyone had any right to be, Keith is something Lance is spotting on the boardwalk, and he’s not sure if he likes what he’s seeing. 

And Keith realises he’s angry about that, that he can read in the turn of Lance’s lip and the divot between his eyebrows that he doesn’t like what Keith’s done, not really. Angry that Lance has done that to him, made him feel ashamed with half an unintended look, when Keith’s only done it for him, anyhow; angry out of his head because it’s not _ nice  _ to be so known. It’s not a nice thing that Lance has done to him, to have tugged on Keith’s life, only a little tug, like Lance hadn’t even tried, only it had worked and all Keith’s desperation and rage and want came unspooling out at Lance’s feet - 

How dare Lance look at him, even if it’s unintentional, especially if it’s unintentional, like that - like Lance can see right through him, like he’s not seeing anything better than an orphan, which is another way of saying the world’s leftovers, isn’t it - how dare Lance judge him, silently, the silence of it somehow worse, for doing something, anything, to keep Lance in his precious job that Keith hates for him to be doing anyway -

He braves a look away to Nyma, and the understanding in her eyes somehow sours his mood more, even as he knows she thinks it was a good idea - a bad idea, really, but bad ideas sometimes worked. That’s the thing, sometimes it worked.  In a world where they had bombs that could turn whole cities to dust, where Shiro and Allura couldn’t go out most places and Keith couldn’t take Lance out anywhere, where wars could even be silent, bad ideas worked against all sense because the world wasn’t a place that made sense, not really. 

_ You’re a bad idea, Keith.  _

“You’re welcome,” Keith says, or means to say, quite calmly, only it comes out halfway to a snarl. 

 

*

 

He’s halfway down the path back into the open part of the grounds, head down and eyes stinging and telling himself it’s ridiculous - stupid, even - to cry over something he’s fixed, when he hears the now-familiar thud of Lance’s footsteps, running to catch up with him. He thinks about picking up speed, knowing that Lance can’t keep up right now - because of his uniform dress shoes and how he couldn’t be seen running by guests, it ruined the picture - but he doesn’t want to look like he’s running away, so he stops instead. He doesn’t turn around, tells himself he won’t, but when Lance says his name like that, sort of soft, Keith can’t help it. 

When he turns around, Lance is barely out of reach. The distance between them is a taunt, the same way it’s been ever since they met. Keith doesn’t try to close it. 

“Doesn’t your shift start soon?” 

Lance’s eyebrows dart up. 

“Do you not want to talk to me?” Lance asks him, which is - not the response Keith was expecting. 

Keith looks at the oddly vulnerable tilt to Lance’s mouth, the way he’s crossing his arms across his chest like he’s cold, though the heat is still simmering even here in the shade of the trees. 

“What? No. When did I say that? Doesn’t Iverson -” Iverson always gets at Lance, docks the staff’s pay for every minute they’re late when they should be on the clock, Lance  _ told _ him this, Keith is just trying to - 

“You didn’t,” Lance agrees, “But that’s still how it sounded. To me. Or - or something.” He drags a hand over his face and sighs. With how he’s been running, part of his hair’s gotten dislodged from the stupid impeccable lacquer Lance wrestles it into for work. It’s getting in his eyes. “Christ, this is a - we’re - are we having the same conversation here?”

“I don’t know,” Keith replies, “What are you trying to talk about?” 

“I don’t know either!” Lance snaps back, clearly frustrated. “Only that guy just - and then you just -”

“I just saved your job is what I just did,” Keith tells him, “So if you don’t like how I did it, I’m sorry. That you don’t like it.” He swallows. “But I’d still do it again. So fuck you if you’re going to tell me I shouldn’t have. Do you think I enjoy watching someone put you into a corner like that? Do you think I’ve  _ ever _ been okay with watching that?” 

Now, Lance just looks stunned. Keith clamps down on all the words threatening to spill out. Manages a breath, but it’s like it shreds itself on all the vitriol in his mouth, because it comes out ragged. Lance opens his mouth, and Keith braces himself for the inevitable backlash -

“I love you.” 

Keith blinks. Lance meets his eyes and shrugs. There’s something defensive in it, the stubborn tilt of his chin, the set of his mouth. His eyes are a kaleidoscope: defiance, terror, resignation. 

“What?” 

It’s not what he meant to say. Keith sees Lance flinch, recover, and hold his ground. All in the span of seconds that stretch out around them, long and liquid, some kind of insulation from the outside world. The wind picks up, flooding Keith’s mouth with the smell of honeysuckle. 

“You’re right. I don’t like it,” Lance admits, which, even though Keith could tell that already, makes something in the swoop of his stomach drop. “But I don’t like it and I love you. So, I guess it’s - I guess it’s both.” He shrugs again. “Which, you know, isn’t easy, it’s actually kind of - a mess, really - but it makes sense. You aren’t easy. And I shouldn’t like that, but I do. I really, really like it. You.” He takes a deep breath, the sort that shudders as it settles into his lungs. “And, I know - it’s a bad time, but I don’t know - I don’t think there’s a good time, or there hasn’t been - or there has been, and I was -”

“You were?” Keith hears himself as though from a great distance. He finds himself moving closer to Lance, as though a thing compelled. Lance, watching him approach, can’t seem to stop running his mouth. Keith is mesmerised by it.  

“Scared. You scare me more than anyone, Keith. I’m scared of myself when you’re here. I’m more - you make me more of something - look, shit, I didn’t mean to make it all - I can - I take it back, we can just - it doesn’t even matter anyway -” 

Lance shuts his mouth with an audible clicking noise, eyes deer-ready, a breath away from bolting. Keith, hyper-aware of the sounds of other people’s holidays through the leaves, still can’t stop himself from getting close, and then a little closer, and it still doesn’t feel like enough - 

“Hey, want to hear a secret?” Keith says. He keeps his voice low, near enough to Lance he’ll know he’ll hear it, but quiet. This has been his, and now it’ll be theirs. “I’m scared of you too. I’m scared you’re going to call it quits, and nothing’s ever going to be the same and I’ll never feel like this again.”

“Oh,” Lance’s voice is more breath than sound. 

“I’m not used to it either,” Keith says, “So I’m bad at it.”  

They stand and absorb this in silence. 

“He didn’t kiss me,” Keith decides to tell Lance. “He just tried to.” 

Lance sighs. 

“I figured. You think that’s not kind of - that I wouldn’t be - look, I was a little freaked out, alright? With what we’ve done. Hearing you hold that over him. When you have way more to hold over me. You know that, right?” 

“I wouldn’t. Lance, I would never -”

“I know that,” Lance interrupts him. Him sounding so dismissive shouldn’t feel so reassuring. “But just for a second - it was there. The thought of it. Just for a second. It was -” He takes a deep breath. “Sorry. You’re too straightforward to stab me in the back, anyway.” He offers Keith a small, crooked smile. “Thank you. Or something.”

“Sure,” Keith hears himself saying. He knows Lance needs to go to work, needs to go talk to Nyma. They need to fix the world back on its axis, but he wants to stand here, just here, for as long as he can. “Anytime. Or something.” 

 

*

 

Chad doesn't seem to appear on the terrace for the evening meal. Keith doesn't miss him. 

Dinner is quiet, right up until it isn’t. Keith picks through his food, watching Shiro out of the corner of his eye, all wary and caught out. Shiro lets him stew.  _ You let me down, Shiro.  _ From the subtle downturn of his mouth, it’s clear Keith’s drawn blood this time. He’s not sure how to fix it - if it’s fixable, if it’s something that needs to be fixed. They’ve both been living in the same script so long any attempt to change it was going to hurt. That’s what Keith is telling himself. Growing pains, right? 

He’s rehearsing apologies in his head, but they all turn to dust before they make it to his mouth.  Keith takes coffee when the waiter on shift offers it, and thanks him, like he’s supposed to, and then drinks it instead of having to talk. He’s trying to figure out how to say sorry without saying he didn’t mean it, because although he didn’t mean for it to wound Shiro how it has, he did mean it. He doesn’t want to apologise for wanting something Shiro doesn’t, because to Keith, that’s surely what this is all about.  

The other thing is this: underneath it all, Keith is half-sick with happiness. He’s so buoyed up he can barely eat.

Lance loves him. Keith loves a boy, and he loves Keith back. It sounds impossible. It should be impossible. It is impossible, but it is anyway. It is anyway, and Keith’s heart is going so fast with it. He keeps replaying the whole thing, over and over, all of the last day. Every last thing Lance did and said. How he looked asleep. How when Keith saw him getting dressed in the hotel mirror he thought of how it would be to live a life where Lance being right there, within reach, could become something regular. He wonders at what point you start taking that kind of thing for granted. He’s not sure he ever could.  _ I love you.  _ It’s a kind of miracle. 

Later, this is the part he’ll remember: Shiro silent at his side, the food made tasteless in his own mouth from happiness, looking up to catch Lance’s eye as he weaves through tables. The divot in Lance’s cheek that tells Keith he’s smiling, even as Lance turns his face away. That’s the thing with secrets. Some of them don’t fester if you let them alone, even as they fill up your whole chest the same. Some of them just warm there, getting better all the time. 

Even if Keith hadn’t been watching, he’s sure he would have heard Iverson shout Lance’s name across the span of the tables. 

“McClain! A word, please?” 

Iverson and shouting are a strange, habitual kind of marriage, so it shouldn’t catch Keith’s attention as much as it does, only for how Iverson’s voice - the whole thing seems weighted more than usual. Keith puts down his fork as Lance snaps around, face all surprise, and makes it to Iverson’s side in about ten flat seconds. So Lance can hear it too, whatever’s changed. 

“Yes, sir?” 

“Yesterday night.” Iverson isn’t that much taller than Lance, but he’s carrying every last inch to hold over that he has spare. “You swapped your night off with another staff member.”

_ Yesterday night.  _ Keith’s whole body seizes up for a second, and he can feel Shiro’s eyes on him, so he mechanically reaches for his coffee again. He’s already holding it to his mouth before he realises the cup’s empty. He puts it back down. The clink of the cup against the saucer feels a lot louder than it should. 

“Yes,” Lance says. He’s polite but Keith can see the nervousness in the way Lance has his hands, in how he turns to an empty table and puts the tray he’s holding down. The glasses rattle together when he does. “It was an emergency, so I asked. I’ll be here on Friday to make up.” He doesn’t apologise. 

“Yes,  _ sir _ ,” Iverson corrects. “And what was your emergency, then?” 

“Sir?” Lance echoes. He looks about ready to bolt, and Keith can’t blame him -  can hear the volume of conversation in the room slowly dropping around where Lance stands. Over in the corner, Cindy Gilmore looks positively gleeful.  

“The others also said you weren’t back in the staff quarters before you turned up for your morning shift,” Iverson continues. 

“I was on time,” Lance says, and then remembers: “Sir. You can check the book. Is there some kind of problem?” 

“It depends,” Iverson replies. “Do we have some kind of problem, Lance?” 

“No, sir.” 

“I think we do. You see, the same night you had a sudden emergency and couldn’t be found anywhere by anyone, Mrs. Hearst found her room had been broken into.”

_ She wouldn’t,  _ Keith catches himself thinking, even as he knows she would. He doesn’t need to turn his head all the way to see her, wide-eyed next to her husband, watching the unfolding show.  

“Mrs. Hearst?” Lance repeats. He’s gone pale. 

“She says you’re the only staff member outside of Reception who has ever handled her key.” Iverson tilts his head. “Call it coincidence, but I’ve never been taken for a fool before. I’ve no intention of that changing.” 

“She dropped it,” Lance says this part in a rush, the syllables all blended together, “So I gave it her back. That’s it. That’s - that’s everything.”

It’s an obvious lie, even from this distance. Keith winces. He knows why Lance isn’t telling the truth of it - with her husband right there, with her diamond ring on display. Who would believe him? 

That has to be why this is being done in public, aired out on the terrace in the cooling night rather than in some guestless corner. It’s almost Biblical. Lance had humiliated her right in the same spot by turning himself into something she couldn’t buy, and she’s calling in her debt. 

“That’s everything,  _ sir. _ ” Iverson says. “Don’t be smart with me, McClain. It doesn’t suit you.” 

Keith doesn’t think Iverson’s in on it, for all he’s had it in for Lance as long as Keith’s been staying here, with the kind of harsh tongue that comes out of habit. 

“We take complaints of this kind very seriously,” Iverson continues. “Especially from such long-standing guests as the Hearsts. Especially when it’s theft. It was a significant amount, and so - I am left wondering here, Mr. McClain, exactly what kind of emergency sends a young man out into the evening with next to no warning, and doesn’t bring him back until the next day?” 

Keith can imagine Lance rattling through a list of reasons in his mind and coming up empty, can imagine it because Keith is doing the same. The absence of a solution is glaring. Whatever Lance says, he’ll need to check out. Nyma was working yesterday night. Keith thinks briefly of Lance’s friends that he’d met but - no, they all worked in hotels, in restaurants. There’s no guarantee they weren’t at work themselves, and if he’s caught lying - 

Keith can feel Shiro’s stare, knows Shiro must be seeing - how Keith is struggling to breathe, how Keith was in the same clothes this morning as the night before - knows Shiro must be sliding pieces together into something that fits. But Keith’s busy trying to battle down his own panic, and it’s going badly. 

For a single, painful moment, Keith thinks Lance will give him up, give them up - because of course, to damn one of them is to damn the other now. Then, he thinks he wants Lance to give them up, to hell with it. Just for the looks on all their faces, just for how - for a wild second - Keith wonders if it would stop this, Lance being strung up in the middle of the hotel terrace for something he can’t have done. He thinks of saying it himself:  _ he was with me.  _ But he can’t let it make its way to his mouth. Better to be called a thief than whatever kind of criminal this makes them.   

Keith is eighteen years old, the sky is blue, and Lance can’t lose his job. That’s all there is, until it isn’t: until the world they live in has more and more rules. Until following them makes you into a matryoshka, chipping away at your soul, making yourself into something ever smaller to fit. 

Lance, looking at the floor, mutters something, so low Keith strains to hear it. 

“What was that?” Iverson says, “Speak up, will you -”

“I said,” Lance interrupts him, much louder, “I don’t know.” He doesn’t look at Keith, but he doesn’t need to. “I don’t know where I was. I can’t remember.” 

“You can’t remember?” Iverson sounds aghast. 

“That’s right,” and Lance’s voice is so absurdly steady Keith wants to scream. Lance’s shoulders go back, smoothing out of their forward hunch, and he’s not looking at the floor anymore. “I don’t know where I was, sir. _ I can’t remember. _ ” 

Defiance still looks good on him. It always has done. When Iverson reaches out and grabs Lance’s shoulder, Lance turns with him, and his gaze sails over Keith. Catches, like a snag on fabric, for barely a heartbeat. Keith doesn’t know what his face is doing, but Lance shakes his head, just once, just minutely, and then lets himself be turned away fully. Keith can hear Iverson talking about waiting in his office and about contacting the appropriate authorities, but it’s secondary, all gone to white noise. 

Keith looks at the back of Lance’s head. The high starched collar around his neck. Keith sits there, with the knowledge of a small medallion on a chain underneath that same collar - a talisman made of cheap metal, for a boy taken out of his place in the world and made to start again. 

_ I wish this was ours.  _

Something in Keith snaps. 

He stands up, not bothering to push his chair back. There’s the staccato of metal against stone, his skin gone two sizes too small with anger. A smaller part of him that admits he’s prickling with fear. Before he can move, though, he feels a hand grab his arm. 

“Sit down,” Shiro says, glaring at him. Keith hesitates, and the look in Shiro’s eyes sharpens. “Do it.” 

“Shiro -”

“Sit  _ down, _ Keith.” Shiro yanks Keith down, back into his seat. Keith immediately tries to get back up again, but Shiro puts his weight into his palm and his palm onto Keith’s shoulder. 

Then, using Keith as balance, pushes himself to standing. 

“I’m not going to -”

“Yes, you are.” Shiro’s face is very stern. “You can’t help him.” 

He doesn’t even look down at Keith. 

“Stay there,” he adds, and then marches off towards where Lance and Iverson are rapidly disappearing through the tables, passing Gloria Heart’s smug expression. Keith doesn’t stay there - he’s not stupid, but he can’t just sit around - 

“Excuse me,” Shiro calls out, accent so careful and polite it’s like the best china, “Mr. Iverson, was it? I couldn’t help but overhearing that rather unpleasant altercation with your staff just now.” 

Keith stops, three steps behind Shiro, at the same time Iverson stops, three steps ahead and Lance in tow. Iverson turns. 

“Ah, Mr. Shirogane,” Iverson says, “Room 294. Am I wrong?”

Keith thinks of Lance saying something similar once.  _ Management has us memorise your numbers. Helps with billing. _

“You’re not wrong at all,” Shiro says, and smiles, only it’s his courtroom smile, which is how Keith senses Shiro is playing at something, though he can’t for the life of him figure out what, or even why. Shiro has never liked Lance - or rather he liked him well enough when Lance was nothing more than the bartender, rather than the ever-present subject of their arguments. “I heard there was a suggestion Mr. McClain here couldn’t provide his whereabouts? He’s lying.”

Now, Lance looks properly frightened, looks how Keith feels. When he glances between Iverson and Shiro, he seems frozen but for the way his eyes move between them. 

“Of course he is,” Iverson almost snaps, but reins it back in. “Who doesn’t remember where they were for an emergency?” 

Lance briefly looks over Shiro’s shoulder, eyes widening when he sees Keith. He doesn’t look betrayed outright yet, but it’s a close call. Keith remembers saying  _ he won’t tell anyone, I won’t let him _ and grits his teeth. 

“That’s not what I mean,” Shiro says, “Not exactly. I mean he was lying for me.” 

There’s a long silence.  Keith nearly blurts out  _ what  _ but holds it back. Lance’s eyes widen even further. Shiro follows Lance’s gaze this time, but seems unsurprised. 

“It’s nothing to bother yourself with, Keith,” he adds, “You can wait for me back at our table.”

“I think I’ll wait here, if it’s all the same,” Keith replies. Shiro, unable to push it further with their audience, drops it. 

And Iverson watches Shiro, considering: taking in the crisp shirt, the slacks, the open expression. 

“Go on,” he says, voice slow. 

“Lance,” Shiro says now, talking to Lance directly. Lance’s face goes past stunned. Keith isn’t sure he’s ever heard Shiro call Lance by his first name - not directly to his face. “I know you’re trying to protect reputations here, but it’s an unnecessary sacrifice on your part. There’s no shame in it, of course, but you needn’t be honourable on my account.”

“I - I see, sir.” It takes Lance several tries to form the words. He looks away from Shiro to Keith and back, then nods. Seemingly satisfied, Shiro turns back to Iverson. 

“You see,” Shiro explains, with that particular tone, the one that reeks of reasonableness to such an extent it makes Keith want to scream, certain of the fact there’s a person bundled up beneath all of that logic - “Mr. McClain’s emergency was a date, only he had the bad luck to be stood up. The lady in question didn’t arrive. Unfortunately, I had found myself in a similar situation, but had already bought the tickets for the evening’s entertainment - a foolish move, I know, but I was counting on my own luck.” As Shiro speaks, he fishes in his pocket. “As it is, I came across Mr. McClain in the foyer of the cinema - the little MGM that’s over near the Boulevard, it’s not the most savoury place, you understand - and I offered him the spare ticket. I’m not a man who likes to waste things, Mr. Iverson.”

Keith stares as Shiro pulls two ticket stubs out of his pocket and holds them out, in his palm, for Iverson to take. 

“I asked him to keep it quiet, and I fear perhaps he’s taken it too literally - but those tickets ought to clear up any confusion. You can see the date and the time.” 

Iverson scrutinises them. Keith holds his breath. Grudgingly, Iverson nods and hands the tickets back to Shiro. 

“This, of course,” Iverson says, “Doesn’t explain why he was out all night still.” 

“Doesn’t it?” Shiro asks. “That’s the late-night showing, and a double-bill.” 

“And you asked him not to tell anyone because of what, exactly?” Iverson raises his eyebrows. Keith realises what he might be implying, that Shiro and Lance were out last night committing something unsavoury with women - Keith isn’t sure if Iverson has arrived at the idea of anything else - and has to swallow a laugh at the irony. 

“Oh, that.” Shiro does laugh. “I was embarrassed. Stung pride, you know. You don’t like to admit when you’ve been unlucky with a woman, do you?” 

It’s such a perfect lie that Keith can hardly believe it’s crafted. Can hardly understand why Shiro has gone to the effort of crafting it in the first place. 

“I see,” Iverson says, after a short and excruciating silence. “It appears Mrs. Hearst must have made a hasty assumption.”

“If you like, I can have a word,” Shiro murmurs, “I’ve dined with her and her husband once before.” 

Iverson nods. 

“Lance,” he says now, “You ought to be grateful to this gentleman. It’s on his account I shan’t be calling in anyone higher up.” 

“Thank you, sir,” Lance says, immediate, meaning it. 

“However,” Iverson adds, “There now is the matter of you fraternising with hotel guests. That’s explicitly prohibited in your contract. It’ll be a shame to let you go, all things considered, but we simply can’t allow for staff to turn into troublemakers.”

It takes Keith a beat to catch up to what he’s hearing, and then another to understand it. 

“Are you serious?” Keith says, and swallows when all eyes swing to him. “You can’t be serious. He wasn’t even at work. They weren’t even here.” The unfairness of it stings. “You can’t - that’s complete -” 

“Keith,” Shiro cuts in, “I thought I told you to wait for me at the table.” 

His gaze is a warning. Keith shuts his mouth. 

“I do think,” Shiro appeals now, and the fact Keith is now accepting Shiro appealing on Lance’s behalf is a new level of bizarre, “That, given no harm was done -”

“Lance knew what he was doing.” Iverson refuses to give ground. “It’s in his contract. He signed to it. He has to live by it. Excuse me, but I need to make arrangements for a replacement. It’s a terrible time of year for it.” He doesn’t look to Lance as he says, “McClain, you have until midnight to get your things together.” 

That only gives him the rest of the evening. Lance seems to be staring off somewhere into the middle distance, something rapidly opaque behind his eyes, something like the billowing of an oncoming storm. 

“McClain,” Iverson repeats, harsher now. “Are you listening -”

“Of course I am,” Lance snaps suddenly, voice so vicious it leaves Keith blinking, “I’m always listening, aren’t I? Never mind you can’t even be bothered to call me by my right name, but here I am, listening anyway. I’ll make sure I’m out of your way by midnight,  _ sir. _ ” The sir lapses into a full-blown sneer, the susurration of it jagged, as if forced between Lance’s teeth. 

His eyes are something awful and alight. Searing, they stay with Keith long after Lance has turned on his heel and walked - not running, never running, that’s against the hotel rules - out of sight.

 

*

 

Keith is waiting for Lance outside the usual gate when, half an hour later, Lance steps through and out. He’s changed out of his uniform, glowing in his pale blue t-shirt. A boy cut from the sky. The same single duffel bag Keith had seen just a day before is slung over his shoulder. 

“You’re here,” Lance says. He doesn’t look surprised. 

“Of course I am. I couldn’t - where are you going to go?” 

Lance shrugs. It jostles the bag, enough that it nearly slips from his shoulder. He readjusts it without looking away from Keith. 

“Tell your brother thanks, will you?” he says, instead of replying. “I know it wasn’t for me, but he did it anyway, and that was - that was neat of him. To stick his neck out like that.” 

“But it was for you,” Keith says, feeling his own frown, “It must have been.” 

Lance laughs at him. It’s a little hollow, and sets off an echo in Keith’s chest. 

“No, it wasn’t.” He sounds almost gentle. “That was all for you, Keith. Even though he’s fighting with you, that guy is still fighting for you. It sure is something.” 

“Oh,” Keith says. Feeling the surprise travel through him. 

Echoes can only exist in an empty space. 

Lance looks around them, sees they’re alone and abruptly herds Keith into the shadows. Keith goes, unsure of what to do, what way there is to close a wound of your own making. Lance presses closer, letting his duffel bag slip from his shoulder. Lets it hit the floor this time. Closer, until his feet are between Keith’s, so he can kick them further apart. Keith lets him, and Lance leans in, leans his forehead against Keith’s shoulder - no, against the join between his neck and shoulder. It’d almost be a headbutt if it wasn’t done so softly, like after even all of this - especially because of this - Lance was unsure of what he was asking for. Keith reaches up and runs a hand through his hair, over and over. It’s clumsy, but it’s something. 

“Shhh,” he says, even though neither of them have spoken for some time. 

“It’s going to be fine.” Lance’s voice is quiet, and Keith isn’t sure if Lance is saying it to Keith or to himself, if he’s saying it aloud in the hopes that will transmute it into something real. “It’s going to be fine. It’ll all work out fine.”

_ I love you.  _ Keith wants to say it, but something sticks his mouth together. He’s not sure it’s a good time, to throw that on Lance, when that’s what’s gotten him into this. When Keith’s the one who has, against all of Lance’s good intentions. Guilt is a thing eating him alive. 

So instead he says, “I mean - I - I can help. I can help you.” 

“You’re helping already,” Lance murmurs, dismissive. Keith shakes his head, and then realises Lance can’t see it, so he pushes Lance back so Lance can see him. 

“No,” Keith says, “That’s not what I mean. I mean - I have money, Lance. You know I have money. I can  _ help. _ ” 

It’s Lance’s turn to frown now. Keith doesn’t miss how Lance tenses, either. 

“No,” Lance replies. “No. I don’t want your money, Keith. Why would you -”

“Because I’m sorry! None of this should have happened!”   

Keith blurts it out, because it’s true, because he’s right. Lance shouldn’t have had to put up with any of this, and shouldn’t be punished for any of this, not when Keith’s right here, and it’s because of him, and - 

Something in Lance goes out at the eyes. His whole face shuts down. _ Disappearing,  _ Keith thinks, a little wildly. Shiro used to call it  _ disappearing _ when Keith did it.

“Right,” Lance says, and his voice has changed, slipped back into the same tone he’d used on Iverson, only Keith doesn’t know what’s caused it. “Good to know. Glad you’ve cleared that one up for me.”

He steps back from Keith, stricken-looking, blindly grabs for his bag. It goes back on his shoulder and, without any sort of explanation, Lance turns his back on Keith and starts to leave. It’s something he already knows: Keith’s always been aware that just because Lance couldn’t walk away from him in public, doesn’t mean Keith can’t lose him anyway. Only now, it’s getting to be a kind of pattern with them, Keith watching Lance walk away, and Keith hates it - hates it more than he can say. But he doesn’t know how to make it stop. 

Words, after all, aren’t Keith’s strong suit. He still tries. 

“Lance, where are you - you can’t just leave -”

When he reaches for Lance’s wrist, his fingers close around it and for a second, Lance’s pulse beats under his hold. Then Lance yanks his wrist away and breaks it. 

“Why not, Keith?” The look on Lance’s face makes Keith go cold. Then he says it: 

“It’s not like there’s anything for me around here, anyway.” 

“What are you even saying?” 

Lance shrugs. It’s such a small gesture. It shouldn’t be devastating. 

“See you around, Keith.” 

 

*

 

_ But what did you mean,  _ Keith thinks,  _ what did you mean, when you said Iverson couldn’t be bothered to call you by your right name? Have I been saying that wrong, too? Was all of it wrong?  _

 

*

 

When Keith heads back to the hotel room, Shiro is sat watching him from his bed with eyes the wrong side of understanding. 

“Go on, then,” Keith says, and his voice sounds heavy. Dulled. Shiro frowns. “Aren’t you gonna say _I told you so_?”

“Keith,” Shiro says softly. 

“You can say it. I don’t mind if you say it.”

Shiro’s frown deepens. He could always tell when Keith was lying. 

“Keith, I’m not going to -”

“Say it!” Keith snaps, and his voice is suddenly brittle, searing. A knife sharpened too far, in the hope the honing would make the blade better not broken, “I can’t sit in here if you’re just gonna think it.” 

“I wanted to be wrong,” Shiro tells him. “Keith, I wanted more than anything to be wrong,” and Keith takes a breath in, feels it rattle through his body, and says, “He was with me. That night,” because he has to tell someone. Because Lance disappeared with his half of the story, his eyes opaque in the streetlight and for one split arsenic second, Lance had looked at him like he’d hated him. Because it turns out leaving with half of something requires cleaving something else in two first.

“I know.” 

“And you still -” Keith thinks back to Shiro; how he’d stood there, with a confused mouth and earnest valedictorian eyes. “You still lied for him.”

“I didn’t do it for him,” Shiro says, a little shortly. “I knew you’d not be able to live with it if you’d -” 

He stops. Keith says, again, “Say it,” hard-edged, and this time, Shiro sighs and finishes, “I knew you wouldn’t be able to live with it, Keith. That’s all.”

Lance had been right. 

“The tickets?”

“I went by myself, and I just -” Shiro shrugs. “Got them for the both of us. On automatic. Wasn’t thinking. Ripped the second one in my pocket when I was walking over.” 

“He didn’t get angry until I told him I was sorry,” Keith whispers, the tremor of it forcing its way back into his voice. 

“You apologised?” 

Keith shrugs now, and miserably. Shiro raises his eyebrows, stands up and heads over to the liquor cabinet. 

“Jesus, Keith. Did you say why?” 

“He got fired barely an hour ago,” Keith bites out, “I figured he’d remember.” 

The amber light from the room lamps is sickly, not soothing, or maybe it’s just that Keith feels dizzy. Keith sits down in the end, hands in his pockets like anchor, and listens to the faint clink of the soda bottle. There’s the rattle of ice, then: 

“I can’t believe I’m saying this,” Shiro mutters, “But I’m beginning to feel for that kid.”  

When Shiro walks back, he holds the glass of rye out to Keith. Keith stares at the cut crystal, glinting uncomfortably, surprised. 

“I thought I wasn’t allowed.”

“That’s never stopped you before.”

He has a point. Keith takes the glass. It feels heavy in his hands.  

“Don’t drop it.”

“I won’t drop it.” 

Shiro’s still watching him, so Keith takes a hesitant sip. When he does, Shiro nods, as though to himself, and heads back to the cabinet. 

“If you don’t like it, don’t force yourself.”

Keith immediately takes another gulp out of spite. The sharpness of it hits the back of his throat and makes him cough. Shiro’s back is turned, but he says, “Shut up,” anyway, knowing what kind of expression Shiro’s probably making. 

“It’s an acquired taste,” Shiro says, and Keith can almost hear him smiling. 

“What if I don’t?” Keith asks suddenly, “What if I don’t ever?” and he’s not talking about the drink anymore. Shiro stills, then carefully puts down the soda bottle. 

“Then you don’t,” Shiro says simply. “I’m your brother, Keith. You think I’d keep making it for you?” 

“I wasn’t,” Keith says, and then takes another sip. It’s still awful. “I wasn’t sure. If you’d rather I tried.” 

“No,” Shiro says, so firmly Keith feels that small jolt of surprise again. “No, I wouldn’t rather.” He settles into a chair, watching Keith. “I wouldn’t rather that at all.”

“Oh,” Keith manages. 

“Did you say we could help him?” Shiro asks, pushing through, all practicalities. 

“He told me he didn’t want my money.” Keith’s mouth twists. 

“And then you apologised?”

“And then I apologised.”  

“Tell me exactly what you said.”

“I just said! I said I was sorry. And that none of it should have happened.” 

“And you didn’t say why. Or what.”

“I’ve already said I didn’t say why! Why would he _ think _ -” 

“Ah,” Shiro says quietly, seeing whatever expression must be on Keith’s face right now. “Yes. You see.” 

“I’m not - it wasn’t - I didn’t -” Keith looks at the rest of the drink, and then knocks a mouthful back as punishment. It stings. “He said -”

_ Good to know,  _ Lance had said, his eyes burning, yanking his wrist out of Keith’s grasp.  _ See you around.  _

“The first one’s always the worst,” Shiro says, which should sound soothing but feels like having his throat cut. It’s that same gasping of breath, the same helpless shallow feeling in his chest; Lance whispering  _ I wish this was our bed  _ against Keith’s hair, lips catching against his skin,  _ I wish this was ours _ . 

“I don’t want,” Keith says, standing up, casting about wildly, hands untethered, chest caving in, “I don’t want a second one. I don’t want a second one.” He’s still in his jacket and boots. He makes sure he has his wallet. 

“Keith,” Shiro says, “No. No, I know that face.”

“Shiro,” Keith says, “I need the car.” 

“You’ve been drinking.” 

“It’s an acquired taste, right? I didn’t catch it.” The glass is still almost full. Shiro barely glances at it before shaking his head. 

“Nice try.”

“Shiro, please!” Keith rounds on him, his voice ratcheting up, desperate. “Shiro, I’ll never ask for anything again. Please.”

“You’re not driving, and you’re not walking out in a city you don’t know after dark.” 

“Please.” 

This time, when Shiro looks at him, he closes his eyes briefly against whatever he sees. Then he, too, stands up. 

“Keith Kogane, you are going to ring me by 11:30pm, from a public telephone box.” Shiro speaks very slowly and clearly, as though Keith is seven again. “You are going to do this, because if you don’t, I will tear the whole of this state down looking for you. Do you understand me?” 

He stands there, resigned and furious. Keith hugs him. He feels Shiro startle, then settle his arm around Keith’s shoulders. 

“Two hours,” Shiro says, “Don’t test me on this, Keith.”  

"I'm - I didn't mean to say what I did earlier."

"Yeah, you did."

"I didn't mean to say it how I did."

"Keith," Shiro says, tightening his hold for a second. "One battle at a time, okay? I'll still be here when you get back. We'll talk." 

When Shiro watches Keith leave, it feels like a good portion of their lives but in reverse. Keith rounds the corner of the hotel. He makes it to the gate - the usual gate, their gate - without even thinking about it. Lance has walked him back to his room and back to the gate itself so many times it’s burned into him. He steps through the gate - no one to wait for, no one by his side. 

In the shadows, it’s like he can still glimpse Lance, pushing against him - how, Keith realises, he had been asking wordlessly to be  _ held.  _

Keith starts to run. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! I’m alive! I wrote so much for this fic’s final act that I’m having to split it up into two chapters! On the one hand: sorry for drawing it out. On the other hand: it means you get more, I get to regain some semblance of sanity, it’s all good. Sorry if your heart stopped at the end of this chapter over that. 
> 
> Please also note the new tags for this fic. Namely, the Eventual Happy Ending one. I apologise if it’s a mild spoiler for people, but given current politics, I couldn’t in good faith hold out on making clear this story isn’t going to be Another Gay Tragedy. 
> 
> Historical notes for this chapter:
> 
>  
> 
> The [Japanese Occupation of Korea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korea_under_Japanese_rule) lasted for thirty five years, ending in 1945 with the end of the Second World War. Due to the documented human rights abuses, it remains a controversial issue to this day. Speaking the Korean language was taboo, Roses of Sharon (the national symbol of Korea) were uprooted, etc. The practice that Keith’s birth parents undergo with regards to their names is [Sōshi-kaimei](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C5%8Dshi-kaimei) \- in 1939 and 1940, two ordinances were passed. The first was involuntary and required the creation of a Japanese family name. The second - to change first names - was voluntary, but communities were placed under significant pressure to do so, including from within their own communities, as having a Japanese name allowed for less discrimination and better opportunities. Only ten per cent of the population did this, and the ordinances were repealed in 1946, but not all Koreans returned to using their original names. When writing Keith as Korean and as having a Japanese surname, this is the history I refer to, and one I wanted to make mention of - particularly given that in this fic, the three characters of Keith, Shiro and Lance represent three different stories of immigration and identity within 60s America.  
> 
> [Florida](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Florida) has had specific sodomy (anti-homosexuality) laws in place since 1868. The original law made this a felony, with up to twenty years in prison. In 1917, a second-degree misdemeanour was added to the original law, with a fine of up to 500 USD or up to six months’ prison time. As a reference and reminder, in this universe, Lance earns 40 USD a week. (I had to do the conversions accounting for inflation, etc, and average wages myself, so this could be an incorrect estimate, but it’s safe to say Lance would not have the money to pay a fine of this kind, meaning lower-class people prosecuted under the law were almost guaranteed prison time.) The Florida courts interpreted this to include all homosexual sexual activity. In 1971, the Florida Supreme Court struck down the statute ruling all homosexual sexuality activity as a “crime against nature,” but retained the prohibition on sodomy. Same-sex activity therefore remained illegal in the state of Florida until 2003, with the United States Supreme Court ruling in Lawrence v. Texas. As of 2017, the law is unenforceable but has not been repealed by the state legislature.
> 
> ****  
>    
> 
> 
> Blackmail was a common threat and feature of queer life throughout the 20th Century, due to the laws. However, it is important to note that these laws were both weighted more heavily against minorities, and that the in the social imagination, wealthy young men like Keith were more likely to be blackmailed, as they had more social status to lose. For this reason, Lance is ironically more likely to be assumed capable of blackmail for financial gain.  
> 
> And, should go without saying, but: don’t drink and drive, kids. 
> 
>  

**Author's Note:**

> Some era notes:
> 
> the badges Keith is [wearing](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/e0/86/eb/e086ebe4d394c50b6bd363eb8e06cf26.jpg) [are](http://collections.museumvictoria.com.au/content/media/0/263900-thumbnail.jpg) [real](http://res-1.cloudinary.com/moad/image/upload/c_scale,w_1024/v1/moad-web/heracles-production/298/93c/5ed/29893c5edb477ddd4fda18dfbedee46cbe47ea685e15883c7c2cd7443e3c/badge1-50b551b53339f-d08b8a7796768eda6c5a38072b1e8a3532444270.jpg). He's reading The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard. 
> 
> The Vietnam War draft affected about 25 per cent of the US population from the start of the war in 1955 to its end in 1975. Keith is eighteen, so has only just become eligible for the draft. Shiro is ineligible due to being a 4F classifcation - permanent deferral on disability grounds. Wealthy young men often escaped the draft; college students and disabled persons (including homosexuality) were two examples of deferrals from the draft. 
> 
> The Cuban Revolution was from 1953-1959 - 1959 marks the overthrow of the government by Fidel Castro. During the next decade, many gay men (and woman, though to a lesser extent) fled Cuba and emigrated to Miami, due to the work camps for gay men that occurred under the new rule. Historically, a fear of Communism within the USA was a factor that led to suspicion of newly arrived Cuban families. The Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) didn't help matters. 
> 
> Epinephrine is a form of inhaler medication that was popular until the invention of Alupent in 1961 and its FDA approval in 1963. Alupent became more popular due to its lack of side-effects. 
> 
> The Civil Rights Act (1964) has come into effect, but there would still be huge hostility towards Allura and Shiro as a couple and towards Nyma.  
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  


End file.
